


Here in this burning sand

by MirandaTam



Series: Jedi Shmi AU [6]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Discussions of slavery, Gen, Jedi Shmi AU, Slavery, Tatooine, The Republic is using a slave army and this has Consequences
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-23
Updated: 2016-12-14
Packaged: 2018-09-01 19:06:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 36,921
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8634469
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MirandaTam/pseuds/MirandaTam
Summary: Tatooine may not be the bright center of the universe, but it's far from unimportant in the Clone Wars.Anakin struggles to free his people. Ahsoka just wants to help. Both of them find unexpected answers to questions they haven't really asked.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Title, as usual, from the Prince of Egypt.
> 
>  
> 
> _Deliver us, hear our call, deliver us! Lord of all, remember us here in this burning sand_

Anakin hasn’t missed Tatooine, no - not the way his mother has, not the way Beru has. But he does recognize it; he’d grown up here, lived here until he was nine, and some part of that is never going to leave him, no matter how much water he has access to.

He remembers the signs of the desert, how to see the trace of the wind against the dunes, how to know when a sandstorm’s coming. But he only _half_ -remembers those signs. It’s been ten years, after all; he can tell when a sandstorm’s coming, but he doesn’t know how long it’ll last.

“A few hours, maybe?” Beru guesses.

Rex snorts. “I really, really hope that’s a guess on the long end, sirs,” he says.

“With our luck, this one’ll last for a week,” Hardcase grumbles.

“Not a week,” Anakin protests. “… Probably. Not longer than a few days.”

The cave they’ve found for shelter is dark, lit by the orange light of the suns, dimmed by miles of swirling sand. They’d had enough warning to find a cave in the lee of the canyon, and check it for animals or rockfalls, but not much else; Anakin can already tell that he’ll be brushing sand out of his hair for days, and he’s not envious of Beru, who has to dig sand out of her armor every day already.

He makes his way to the back of the cave, further away from the cutting sands swirling just out of reach of the cave’s entrance, and sits.

His back against the wall, this could almost remind him of Geonosis, of the heart-stopping terror of waiting and the hungry darkness of Vulsion. It feels different, though, this cave on Tatooine giving them shelter through a storm. Geonosis had been filled with… with _evil_ , almost. A sandstorm may strip the flesh from your bones, but it’s a force of nature; a sandstorm will happen whether or not someone is there to see it. It’s not evil, and it’s not good - it just _is_ , and there’s something strangely comforting about that.

Beru looks like she feels the same way - relaxed, that is. She pulls off her helmet, revealing her yellow hair braided into a crown, and sits beside him.

“Come on,” she tells Rex, Hardcase, Jesse, and Kix. “Have a seat, take a break. We’re not going anywhere for a few hours at least.”

They hesitate, all four of them together, before Jesse shrugs and takes a seat. The others follow him, pulling off their helmets, just as Beru had.

“So,” Beru says calmly. “Nobody’s listening, not through that storm. If there are any bugs, they can’t transmit through that. We can’t have any hidden tails, or we’d notice them. This cave doesn’t have any secondary exits?”

“None.” Anakin had checked, carefully; a tunnel could have been very good or very bad, depending on where it led. “No one’s getting out; no one’s getting in.”

“All right.” Beru takes a deep, shuddering breath, and _then_ she really relaxes.

Anakin always forgets how much she worries - well, the last time they were on Tatooine, they’d thought they were all safe, and then the slavers had come. Beru has more to worry about, too, with her bounty hunting experience. She knows all - well, most of - the tricks of the trade, so she knows what there is to look out for.

“Sirs?”

Anakin and Beru both look up at Rex.

“You know I’m not a _sir_ , Rex,” Beru says tiredly. “Anakin doesn’t want to be, either.”

Rex shrugs. “Keeping up appearances.”

“Now’s the time to not keep up appearances,” Anakin says, suddenly _knowing_ it, the way he had when he was younger - sandstorms are _safe_. Sure, they’ll cut ribbons into your flesh and pick out your eyes, but nothing can get to you, through a sandstorm. Nothing can be watching you. “We’re not going to have many chances in the future.”

“What does _that_ mean?” Hardcase says.

Anakin sighs. “I… don’t know. But we need to talk strategy.”

“Gardulla’s the last holdout,” Rex says. “But that’s not what you mean, is it?”

“We need to talk _long-term_ strategy,” Beru says. “Rex, how many of the men want to go AWOL?”

There’s silence in the cave for a moment, as if they can’t quite believe Beru asked it that openly.

“Not as many as you’d think,” Rex says finally.

Beru frowns, her hands tighten. “Why not?” she says. “They can’t miss it, not after spending a month here, fighting hutts and freeing slaves.”

“We’re not stupid,” Kix interjects. “We can tell… we can see that we’re just as much slaves as the people we’re freeing. But we were bred, born, and taught to fight. What else are they supposed to do?”

“‘They?’” Rex asks.

Kix snorts. “I’m a _doctor_ ,” he says. “I’m reading coreworld medical journals in my spare time. I’m the idiot staying so I can keep the rest of my idiot brothers from dying before they can get out of this war.”

“I’m staying,” Hardcase says. “It’s much more fun to blow things up as a group than to blow things up alone.”

Jesse just nods, but Anakin can see the glance he exchanges with Kix.

“And I’m not leaving my men,” Rex says. “I took responsibility, that’s _my_ responsibility now.”

“Everyone has their reasons, don’t they,” Beru snaps. “And it all adds up to one thing.”

“Fine,” Anakin says, suddenly so, so tired of… everything. The war, the politics, the lying games that they have to play. “So we can’t get all the clones out. So what _can_ we do?”

That had been Siri’s running theme, during Hypori, facing Grievous. They can’t do everything. But what _can_ they do? “We can… we can save the clones who do want to get out,” he says. “That’s a start. I don’t know much about politics, but Padmé–”

Beru elbows him lightly, and he elbows her back without even a glance.

“She can start working on legislation, rights, all that stuff,” he continues. “What else?”

“I know where there are some nice hiding spots around the galaxy,” Beru says. “Not like Naboo, where a few clones will slip under the radar - places where we could hide hundreds, maybe thousands, of brothers.”

They sit in silence, the sandstorm roaring outside. Anakin can’t really think of much else. Getting them to safety, having places they can hide, working on legislation… there has to be something else.

Rex clears his throat. “Who commissioned us?” he asks.

Beru blinks. “The Sith,” she says.

“Wait a minute, though,” Anakin says, and sits up. “How did the Sith contact Kamino?”

“Offworlders can meet with the cloners for commissions,” Kix points out. “And we know there are cloners who are actively working with the Sith.”

“So there’s a comm trail, right there,” Anakin says, and grins. “Years ago, Mom found the Trade Federation in communication with the Sith. She got a comm code out of it, too…” he trails off. Then he makes eye contact with each of them - Beru’s blue-grey eyes are solemn, serious, and the clones’ dark eyes are much the same. Rex is fully focused on the conversation, and Kix’s eyes are narrowed, thinking things over. Hardcase has barely stopped fidgeting the entire time they’ve been in here, his fingers tapping on his armor or twisting a small bit of cord, and his eyes may have drifted at times, but his ears haven’t. Jesse has been watching and waiting, solid at Kix’s side.

“This is maybe the biggest secret I know about the Sith,” he says. “You _cannot_ tell anyone else. Not your brothers, not Kelin. Not Jango Fett. Not _anyone_. I’m not supposed to be telling you, probably, but we need to plan for this.” He waits until he gets a nod from each of them, one by one, before continuing on. “The comm code Mom found was encrypted, and she was able to decrypt it. They could never trace it fully, but the planetary code was for Coruscant, and the area code was for the Senate district.”

“The Sith are in the _senate?_ ” Beru asks, horrified.

Rex swears. “That goes way deep, then,” he says. “That’s right next to your Temple, isn’t it?”

“It is,” Anakin says. “Mom wasn’t able to follow the comm trail further than that - but now we’ll be finding multiple comm codes.”

“Some of those are going to _have_ to be traceable,” Beru says, her voice gaining energy. “Because there’s going to be funds transfers - and once we have the codes attached to those transfers, we can trace them to the banks.”

“Won’t that just lead back to the Senate, though?” Jesse asks, speaking up. “If the Sith is there, won’t they have just pulled the funds from there?”

Anakin pauses. That’s… that’s likely. The Senate is so big that nobody could review all the budget changes in a year, and from what he’s learned from Obi-Wan’s occasional complaints is that it’s nearly impossible to trace where a proposal really gets started, too.

“We have to try _something_ ,” Beru says. “This is a good starting place, at least - those codes may lead us to something else, too. We never know.”

“Okay,” Anakin says. “We have a starting place. That’s more than we had.” Not by much. But it’s something.

His eyes drift towards the orange light coming from the cave’s entrance, from the sandstorm outside. A grain of sand isn’t much either, he thinks. A grain of sand can be very annoying, depending on where it’s caught. If you have one grain of sand, you probably have more, somewhere nearby.

And there’s no telling what multiple grains of sand will get up to, is there?

Outside, the sandstorm rages on.

 

* * *

 

 

Eventually, the conversation digresses into favorite weapons, of all things; Rex insists that pistols are the best, while Hardcase will never abandon laser cannons.

Anakin backs out of that conversation. There’s never going to be anything better than a lightsaber, after all.

Being cooped up is making him restless, so he paces a bit, until Beru sticks her leg out and tries to trip him; then he goes and paces away from the back of the cave, near the entrance.

It’s been a month since they landed on Tatooine, since they started attacking the Hutts’ palaces and, by extension, the other slavers and masters that litter the planet. A month, and they have maybe half the planet freed; a month, and he still hasn’t been able to find Kitster, or any of the others who were taken when Storm’s Eye fell. Gardulla must have them, Anakin thinks - somewhere in her dungeons, somewhere in her palace.

But Gardulla the Hutt is not as easy a target as Jabba had been, and Jabba hadn’t exactly been as easy as threading the needle; on top of her own power, Garulla has used the Hutts’ alliance with the Separatists to its full extent, calling on legions of droids for backup and to guard her own palace. Alone, the army could deal with the droids, or they could deal with Gardulla’s personal forces, but both together are a far tougher nut to crack.

Then there’s Ventress. Anakin could definitely do without her taunts, and her sneers, and her annoying proficiency with dual-wielding lightsabers while turning up in the most inconvenient places. She hasn’t been seen for a week or so, though, giving Anakin hope that she’s screwed off to somewhere else.

As he thinks, Anakin slows his pacing - it’s not helping get any of his nervous energy out. Instead, he takes a seat on the floor, still in full view of the howling storm outside, and begins a basic stretching routine. It takes him a few moments, but he lowers his upper body down until it’s level with his legs, straight against the sandy floor of the cave. His muscles stretch, a hint of burn helping him calm his thoughts. It’s always so much easier when he can feel something, physically - it helps him be present, fully inside his own body, the way Qui-Gon always talks about. Had always talked about.

He hadn’t mentioned that as a goal, not to anyone, not even Obi-Wan, but Anakin can’t be the only one remembering that Qui-Gon had disappeared on Tatooine - disappeared looking for _him_ , for Padmé, and they’d talked it over, it’s not their fault, but… if there’s any sign of him, Anakin knows that it’ll be found in Gardulla’s palace.

When he sits up and goes to switch to his other side, he sees that Hardcase and Kix have joined him.

“Does the stretching help?” Hardcase asks. “With the…” he shrugs, not bothering to hide his own restlessness but not caring to put it into words.

“Better than nothing,” Anakin admits. “But take it slow, don’t try to copy me - Jedi training takes years to get this flexible.”

“Yeah, I’m here to make sure that neither of you idiots break yourselves,” Kix says. “Though there are some brothers that can just _do_ that - some genequirk giving them an edge with their flexibility.”

Hardcase rolls his eyes. “I’m not an idiot, Kix,” he says. “I just need to _do_ something. Don’t you ever get bored?”

Kix reaches into one of the pockets on his armor and pulls out… a flat, small-screened datapad. “Books,” he says, and clicks it on. “Medjournals, too, but how the hell can I be bored with fiction?”

“My mom used to tell stories to make us settle down,” Anakin offers. “We didn’t really have any books, so when we got stormed in and I got too restless she’d sit me down and tell me stories.”

“I remember that,” Beru calls from the other side of the cave where she’s talking with Rex and Jesse. “It was one of the only ways to get you to sit still for more than a minute at a time without some piece of machinery to fiddle with.”

“Like you weren’t as bad, with all your questions,” Anakin calls back. “We could hardly go a minute without _but why did they do that_ or _but how does that actually work_ or–” He breaks off laughing when Beru throws a small rock at him. He dodges easily, even sitting on the floor stretching, but then she knew he would.

“What kind of stories?” Hardcase asks, drawing Anakin’s attention back to him and Kix.

“All sorts,” Anakin says. “How the moon split into three, the woman and the wind, the trickster and the tzai…” he shakes his head. “I only half-remember most of them, I need to ask her to remind me.”

“I think Sarad might have told us that one,” Kix says. “The woman and the wind. That sounds familiar.”

By now, Anakin’s used to the way the clones all call her _Sarad_ , even when he thinks of her as _Beru_. “ _They’re both my name_ ,” she’d said when he asked her which she’d prefer. “ _They’re both me - keep using whichever feels right_.”

“I can see how that one would feel right to tell, on Kamino,” Anakin says, then rolls up to sit on his knees and begin stretching his arms.

For a brief second, when he turns his head, he’s looking away from Kix and Hardcase, looking outside into the storm, and he… sees something.

Anakin pauses, lowers his arms to his sides. The sands swirl, twisting and turning, but something is different. He can see shapes painted against that giant orange expanse, the sand twisting from spirals to circles, one inside another inside another. They grow points, and for a moment he can almost see - wings? Horns? Whatever they are, they’re gone, passing out into grains of sand as the next image forms.

Small points of light - you see sandstorms glittering, sometimes, as the grains reflect sunlight just right, but not like this, not stationary. A field of stars, stretched out across the cave’s entrance, coalescing into a single point, like shooting stars, and the point falls to the earth, to the planet below, the path they all trace looking almost like a tree–

“ _Sir!_ ”

Anakin only jerks back to reality with the hand on his shoulder. “I–” he says, then coughs. There’s sand in his mouth. He’s…

Standing just outside the cave’s mouth, he realizes. He can feel the sand stinging his skin. It’s Rex’s hand that’s brought him back to awareness.

“What are you _doing?_ ” Beru reaches out and drags them both back into the cave.

Rex glances over at Anakin. “He was just… staring out at the storm,” he says. “I was going to ask if something was wrong, but then he just stood up and walked out.”

“I saw something,” Anakin says, then coughs again.

Beru bites her lip. “You saw something. Like something moving outside, or… _heard_ something?”

They’re all watching him so intensely, even Hardcase’s fidgeting stalled for the moment. He knows that none of them are very comfortable with the way that he sometimes can feel things like this, but he also knows that that’s… mostly because of what they’d found in Jabba’s palace.

“The second one,” he says finally. “I think… I think there’s something out in the storm. Some _one_.”

“It’d be crazy to go out into that,” Hardcase points out.

“ _You_ wanted to,” Rex says.

Hardcase shrugs.

“You think this is important, don’t you,” Beru says, her voice flat.

Anakin understands the sentiment - getting caught in the open desert is death in a sandstorm. Nobody leaves their shelter unless they absolutely have to.

“It is,” he says. “I don’t know why, but there’s someone out there that I have to find, or else…” he frowns. “Something bad will happen.”

Beru stares at him for a moment longer, then sighs. “Fine,” she says. “But we’re not just wading out into the sandstorm, no matter what Force tricks you have up your sleeve. We’re doing this with a plan, not just charging out.”

“I wasn’t going to _charge_ ,” Anakin says. “Walk determinedly, maybe.”

“Whatever, Skywalker,” Beru says, and tosses his pack at him. “Our armor will protect us from the worst of it, unless our filters get clogged; it’s already going to be awful trying to scrape sand out of the crevices, who cares if it’s a little worse. Wrap up so that you’ll be able to breathe, at least.”

“I didn’t say you had to come _with_ me,” Anakin says.

“We’re not leaving you to stumble on a nest of Hutt forces all by yourself,” Rex retorts. “Or walk off a cliff, or get buried in sand, or whatever it is that you’re going to stumble into this time.”

“That was _one time_ ,” Anakin says, exasperated, but it’s five against one. “Fine. Can we rely on my ‘ _Force tricks_ ’ to get us back here once we’ve found whoever’s stuck in the storm?”

Jesse grins as he pulls his helmet on. “What’s the worst that could happen?”

“We could all die horrible, horrible deaths,” Kix says flatly.

“True,” Jesse says thoughtfully.

It takes Anakin more time than he’d like it to to wrap the cloth around his head, covering his mouth, his nose, his ears, and his hair; a pair of goggles goes over his eyes, dulling his vision a bit but at least keeping the sand out of his eyes. The rest of his clothing is already as tight as he can get it, Jedi tunic’s open sleeves tied shut to keep out the majority of the sand, and the shirt’s collar similarly secured. Last but definitely not least, he pulls on a cloak, a final barrier against the sand. Maybe he should get a helmet, like Beru and the clones - but no, that would probably just be inconvenient, in the end.

Suited up and prepared, Anakin leads them out into the storm.

It’s not like there’s a taut string leading him where he needs to go, not really - but every so often he’ll see something out of the corner of his eye, a flash or a hint of a shadow. Sometimes it’ll feel almost like gravity, like his feet are walking in the orbit of something. Sometimes he’ll face in a direction and just _know_.

He doesn’t know how long they wander through the storm, but Beru and the clones stay close behind him, following almost in his footsteps, like the tuskens do. Anakin knows that because of Beru’s occasional calls, because of the faint murmuring he can hear behind him - their helmets have internal comms, but he has no way of listening to more than the hint of sound that escapes the helmets. He can’t look back - his gaze is focused ahead, searching, searching for whatever he’s looking for.

For all that, it’s Rex who spots the downed ship first.

“Looks like a Jedi ship,” Rex shouts over the storm.

It does, and that’s what worries Anakin the most. What would another Jedi be doing crash-landing on Tatooine?

The hull is sealed, at least - good on whoever’s stuck in there, looking for a way to protect themself from the sand. But the ship is half-buried already, and getting deeper by the minute; a few more hours, and the pilot will be trapped. Though they wouldn’t be if they were a Jedi - a Jedi could use the Force to get out, making Anakin wonder why their excursion has been so necessary.

Rex knocks twice on the cockpit, and there’s movement inside - hard to see anything more clear than that in this lighting.

Then the cockpit pops open, and Anakin gets his answers.

She’s tiny, her montrals barely starting to gain any real definition on the tips, not older to be anything more than a padawan. She’s got a cloth - looks like the outer layer of her tunics - wrapped crudely around her head.

Anakin gestures to her, and gestures to his pack; she tilts her head, then nods after a few seconds and reaches down into the ship to grab her things.

Beru and the clones are circling the ship, probably talking among themselves; Jesse points to something, and they all nod their heads, but Anakin doesn’t know what they’re agreeing on.

The tiny padawan emerges again from the ship, this time carrying all her things haphazardly stuffed into a pack. Anakin rolls his eyes behind his goggles, and quickly and carefully repacks it so that sand will have a harder time getting in.

Of course, that’s not where the trouble stops. She takes her first careful steps off her ship… and sinks ankle-deep into the sand. Because of course she does - she’s a tiny snip of a thing, but togruta can pack some serious mass, and that combination equals sinking on loose sand.

Anakin resists the urge to sigh. They’ll never make it back to the cave like that.

When Beru and the clones gather back to Anakin, he’s sure they’re making comments about the way he’s had to pick up the padawan and wrap her up in his cloak, shielding her from both the wind and the sand. She’s heavy, for a being that small, but he’ll manage carrying her back to the cave, and there’s no way she could have walked.

They don’t really talk, on that long trek back to the cave, but Anakin can feel her, bright in the Force, and wonders whose padawan she is, and why she’d crashed here, on Tatooine.


	2. Chapter 2

It feels like an age before they get back to the cave, but once they’re there, it almost seems like they’d never left.

Except for the fact that they’ve got a tiny togruta padawan with them.

The first step back into shelter always feels strange - they’ve been wandering out in the storm for hours, and suddenly they’re no longer being pushed by the wind, no longer being buffeted by sand. It’s such a relief that Anakin just stands there for a second. Beru nudges him from behind, reminding him that he has to let the rest of them in, too, and he moves deeper into the cave.

The padawan decides to use that moment to wriggle out of his cloak, though, tripping him up; they don’t end up in a pile on the floor, but it’s a close thing.

Her montrals are striped white and blue, and her skin is the same orange-red as Shaak Ti’s; Anakin thinks he might have seen her around the Temple a few times, but there are a few togruta with that coloring in the Order. What really makes him pause, though, is the edging on her clothes. Her over-tunic is brown Jedi standard, but she’s got a dark red shirt and a matching skirt, and both of them are edged in bright yellow. She’s not someone’s padawan - she’s one of his mother’s Strays.

“Knight Skywalker!” she says, and that’s _still_ weird. Anakin still feels half like a padawan.

“That’s me,” he says. “Who are you, and why are you here?”

“And what happened to your ship?” Rex adds. “That was a pretty nasty blast-hole in the side.”

She bites her lip. “It got shot,” she says. “I guess I was flying too low, or I put in the sub-planetary coordinates wrong? But I was supposed to come out over your camp, and instead I nearly landed on some palace.”

“It’s a miracle you’re alive, then,” Beru says, her helmet still on. “What’s your name?”

She folds her hands and bows appropriately to the whole group of them. “Initiate Ahsoka Tano,” she says. “I’m a message-runner, I’ve got a message for Knight Skywalker.”

Anakin frowns. “One so important they couldn’t do it over a holocall?” he says. “That’s… strange.”

“That’s part of the message,” Ahsoka says. “They’re worried that someone might be intercepting their transmissions - they said something about ambushes being intercepted, and Gardulla always knowing your next move.”

Anakin exchanges a glance with Beru. That’s bad, _very_ bad - and it has some worrying implications. If Gardulla’s been listening to their transmissions this whole time… but how could she have done that? Anakin can’t think of any time her people would have had access to their communications systems. But for all that… it makes a worrying amount of sense.

“Is there any more to the message?” Rex asks, bringing the focus back to the padawan. Initiate.

“… The Senate isn’t very happy that the last Hutt is still holding out here,” she says. “They want Knight Skywalker to be done here in one week, one way or the other.”

He can feel a headache growing. Of course they do. It’s not like he hasn’t given all the excuses they want, the hyperspace lanes and the decrease of Hutt power - it’s not like it’s not a good cause on top of that. It’s not like slavery isn’t one of the evils the Republic has promised to eradicate, then done nothing about.

“The Senate?” Hardcase asks pointedly.

“… Yes,” Ahsoka says, looking bewildered. “The Senate?”

Oh. The _Senate_.

The Sith don’t want him here, on Tatooine. The Sith probably don’t want the Hutts out of power at all; Force, the Hutts are allied with the Separatists, who are allied with the Sith anyways. And then the Sith in the Senate…

Anakin can feel his headache growing exponentially; it almost makes him wonder what the point of this war is, with Sith on both sides of it. How does that even make _sense_?

“All right,” he says, and sits down on the cave’s sandy floor, his back against the wall. “Fine. We’ll deal.”

Beru shifts in place for a few seconds, then sighs and sits beside him, finally taking off her helmet. “We haven’t _been_ dealing,” she points out. “We’re going to need a way into Gardulla’s palace - outright assault hasn’t been working, and there’s no way we can make it work with only another week. We need a different angle of attack.”

“So, sneaking in,” Anakin says. “How is that going to work?”

“Have some people pose as mercenaries?” Rex suggests. “Say they’ve heard of the conflict going on, they want some work from her?”

Beru grimaces. “Work like this is usually sought out by the one who wants it done,” she says. “It’d be weird at least for mercenaries to contact her or her people directly, and indirectly there’s no way we could be in in time.”

“And sneaking in would be very hard,” Anakin mutters. “No way to tunnel, not with all the sand, and you can see clearly for miles in the desert, even at night.”

“Could we wait for another storm, use that as cover?” Jesse asks. “We travelled around in this one pretty well.”

Anakin is shaking his head even before Beru is. “It’s going to get exponentially harder with a bigger group,” he says. “And I could feel where Ahsoka was - I don’t know if I could lead us into Gardulla’s palace.”

“We’d have to hope another storm came around, too,” Beru adds. “Which is possible, but definitely not a guarantee.”

“There’s…” Rex hesitates. “We could always pose as–”

“No,” Anakin says - Rex’s tone, after all this time on Tatooine, says that he knows what a bad idea that is. _Should_ know what a bad idea that is. “Nobody wants to do that. Nobody should _have_ to do that.”

“Have to do what?” Ahsoka asks.

They all look away from each other - none of them want to answer her question, not really. Anakin is a Jedi, though - the most senior Jedi on this planet, technically, and isn’t that a terrifying thought. But that means he has to take responsibility.

“Pose as slaves, or slavers,” Anakin says finally. “Look, youngling–”

“ _Initiate_.”

“Initiate Tano,” he says. “How much do you know about the campaign here?”

“You’re fighting against the Hutts to gain control of this planet, giving us access to some of their major hyperspace lanes and a foothold into Hutt space, which is Separatist-aligned,” she recites. “Master Yoda also said something about something that should been taken care of long ago, but he wouldn’t explain when I asked.” She hesitates a few seconds. “That’s what you’re talking about - the slavery here.”

“You’re quick,” Anakin says, almost impressed. Of course the council would have briefed her on the official situation, but with only a short remark from Yoda she’s also deduced the unofficial situation.

Ahsoka grins. “Well, I’m still new to the Strays, but Shmi tries to make sure that we all know the basics of what’s actually going on in the galaxy,” she says. “And my friend Barriss also knows her, from a mission a few years ago, when Barriss was just first a padawan, so we’ve talked a bit.”

That actually helps Anakin place her - he _has_ seen her talking to his mom once or twice, usually tagging along behind Barriss. The mirialan padawan is friends with his mom, though neither of them will tell him what actually happened on the mission where they met and his mom finally accepted her Knighthood; he suspects that at this point it’s more of a running joke than an actual reluctance to tell him.

“So then you know why posing as slavers or slaves isn’t an option,” he says. “The slavers do… bad things. Really bad things. Some of the stuff we found in Jabba’s palace…” he shakes his head. “Even aside from the fact that nobody should have to do that, Gardulla knows my face - she wouldn’t be fooled in a second. The clones’, too.”

Ahsoka crosses her arms. “I don’t see why it’s not an option,” she says defiantly. “Gardulla doesn’t know _my_ face.”

Anakin stares at her for a long, silent minute, trying to convince himself that he’s misheard her. “ _Absolutely not_ ,” he says finally, trying to control his tone and mostly failing. “It’s too risky.”

“Why?” Ahsoka asks, challenging him. “I can get in to her palace, maybe find some allies, maybe find a way to let the rest of you in. I can help!”

“No,” Anakin says, trying to make his voice sound as absolute as Obi-Wan’s could at times.

“Because I’m not a padawan?” she snaps. “Because I’m just a Stray, not skilled enough for a proper master?”

“No!” Anakin takes a deep breath. He can feel his emotions swirling around in his chest, knotting themselves up into anger and fear and _I won’t go back, I can’t go back, I won’t be a slave again–_ He tries to let that knot loosen, let those emotions bleed out of his chest and into the ground. “I would say no to a padawan, too. It’s nothing to do with you being one of the Strays.”

“What are the Strays?” Hardcase asks, unable to keep quiet any more. “Is that another Jedi thing?”

Anakin and Ahsoka exchange a glance, and somehow agree to drop their debate for lighter topics.

“Technically speaking, we’re _overaged initiates still in Jedi training_ ,” Ahsoka says. “The way things used to work, crechelings would become initiates, then by age thirteen, you’d be chosen by a master for padawan training, or you’d go to the Jedi Corps, or leave the Order to do something else. Then Master Skywalker came along - and she was so wise in the Force and in the world that Master Yoda himself chose her as a padawan, and she was already an adult! So obviously the ‘chosen by age thirteen’ wasn’t a hard-and-fast rule any more, but people still followed it, mostly.”

“Then along came Kallei.” Anakin takes over the story here. “She was just about to age out, but she knew that she was meant to be a Jedi Knight. So she went and talked to Mom, who was still a padawan then. Mom and Master Obi-Wan both argued with the Council for _weeks_ , and finally they agreed that any initiate who felt that they were still meant for the Order could talk to Mom, and stay as an overaged initiate. Some of the other Jedi… didn’t really like that, because of the huge break in tradition it was.”

“They started calling us ‘Skywalker’s Strays,’” Ahsoka says. “They were trying to be mean about it, but we - well, the original Strays - decided that they liked the name, and took it for themselves. It fits; we may be straying from the path a bit, but there’s nothing wrong with a little exploration, and not every path is for the same person. We deserve a chance to find our own way, on the traditional path or not.” That last part sounds like she’s reciting something, and she probably is - the Strays stick together.

“How old are you?” Jesse asks.

“Old enough!” Ahsoka insists, rather vehemently.

Anakin raises an eyebrow. “Old enough to run messages in a warzone?”

“You don’t know my age,” she snaps.

“I know that you’re smaller than some ten year olds,” Anakin says - maybe a little unkindly, but Force, what was the Council _thinking_ , sending a kid here to Tatooine?

Ahsoka glares at him. “I’m fourteen! So what if I’m a little small for my age?”

“You’re _tiny_ ,” Anakin says. “Just a little snip of a thing!”

“Yeah, well, you’re not exactly impressive with sand in your hair, _Sky-guy_ ,” Ahsoka says.

Anakin gapes. “Watch it, _Snips_ ,” he growls.

Beru almost falls over laughing. “Please tell me that this is how Jedi always act,” she says.

“Not… really,” Anakin says, and sighs. “Look. Initiate Tano, I’m sure you’re old enough to be running messages, but Tatooine is… not really a place for kids - initiates, padawans, or otherwise.”

He can see that she’s fighting with what to say, so he waits, gives her time to get her words into the right order. “There are kids _here_ , though,” she says finally. “I’ve heard Shmi’s stories, I can read in between the lines. Your campaign _needs_ to succeed. I’m stuck here anyways, since my ship crashed and you probably can’t spare another. I want to _help_.”

“I know,” Anakin says quietly. “But there’s more than one way to help.”

 

* * *

 

 

The storm dies down, finally, as the sun - _suns_ , Ahsoka reminds herself - set. She can feel it, actually, at about the same time Knight Skywalker and the bounty hunter look up and simultaneously say, “Storm’s dying down.” It feels fuzzy, to her montrals, all these little particles of sand bouncing off each other, almost staticky; she’ll be glad when it’s fully gone.

They don’t wait that long to leave the cave, though. Knight Skywalker waits until the first stars are visible, then says that it probably won’t kill them to make their way back to their base now.

“What an encouraging announcement, General,” Captain Rex grumbles. “Really builds my confidence in our chances.”

“I’m glad I could help,” Knight Skywalker replies, deadpan serious.

One of the other clones - Hardcase, Ahsoka thinks - snickers. “Come on, Rex,” he says. “What’s the worst that could happen?”

“When you wake up to sand in your bunk, you’ll know who you have to blame,” Jesse tells Hardcase.

The desert is beautiful at night, though the sand’s still making everything look a little fuzzy to both her montrals and her eyes; she’s not sure she’s _ever_ seen so many stars before. Definitely not on Coruscant, where the sky’s lit up bright even when she’s supposed to be fast asleep - maybe on Ilum, when they had been walking back from the caves of ice, their new crystals warm in their hands. _Maybe_ there had been as many stars there.

Ahsoka’s not counting on it, though, not with the way she can see the band of the galaxy stretched out across the sky. She’s _never_ seen anything like _that_ before.

“That’s the _galaxy_ ,” she breathes. “This is amazing.”

“Right, you wouldn’t have been in the outer rim much before,” Knight Skywalker says, and grins. “Even on dark coreworlds, you can’t really see the galaxy’s band very well, because the outer parts are spread out so thin - but here, we’re staring straight at the core.”

“Illum’s on the rim,” she points out, still staring up at the sky.

“Illum is… strange,” he says. “Strange spin, strange rotation. I’m not sure it even lies on the disc proper.”

Ahsoka blinks. She’d never thought of that - she’s seen star charts before, but Illum’s never listed. Everyone just _knows_ it’s somewhere on the rim, near wild space. But… he’s right, nobody knows exactly where it is - it could very well lie outside the technical bounds of their galaxy.

Ahsoka takes a step out of the cave, then, and hesitates. She doesn’t want to have to be carried by Knight Skywalker again, like some sort of crecheling.

“C’mon, Snips,” Knight Skywalker says. “You should be fine.”

“I _am_ fine,” she insists, and steps out onto the sand. It holds her weight, to her surprise. Maybe it shouldn’t be a surprise, though; she can feel it in her montrals, and it feels… settled. Nothing like the soupy ground it had been when she’d climbed out of her ship.

“See?” she says. “Nothing to worry about, Skyguy.”

The mandalorian - Sarad? Or Beru? Ahsoka’s heard both names, and she’s not sure which to use. She shakes her head. “It’s one of the dangers of the desert, if not as much for humans most of the time,” she says. “For species for a higher mass-to-size ratio, the storms will stir up the sand enough that you can fall into it, and it’ll trap you if you stand in it for too long. It’s definitely something to worry about.”

“But not now,” Ahsoka points out.

“But not now,” Sarad agrees. “Now you just need to worry about the krayt dragons, the herds of bantha, the sand people, the–”

“Stop worrying the initiate!” Knight Skywalker calls back.

“Payback!” Sarad yells to Knight Skywalker.

Ahsoka and Captian Rex exchange a glance and sigh.

“So, you’re an… initiate,” Captain Rex says, dropping back to talk with her as Sarad moves forwards to bicker with Knight Skywalker. “What rank is that?”

“I’m not sure?” Ahsoka says. “I don’t have command, for one thing, I’m really just a message runner.” She doesn’t really _mean_ to sound disappointed when she says that. It just sort of slips out.

“Nothing wrong with running messages,” Captain Rex says. “You’ve definitely brought us some valuable information.”

Ahsoka kicks at the sand a little bit. “Sure,” she says. “But my friend Barriss is out there fighting, protecting people - and I’m stuck flying from planet to planet in a tiny little ship that I can’t even keep from crashing.”

Captain Rex glances down at her, but she can’t tell what his expression is, not through his helmet. “It didn’t look to me like you crashed. It looked like you were shot down.”

“Yeah,” she says, and sighs. “Those cannons on Gardulla’s palace are a real piece of work. I’m just lucky I didn’t land _on_ the place.”

Captain Rex snorts. “Definitely,” he says. “That would have been… bad.”

“I can handle myself!” she protests. It… would be bad, probably, yes, but not _as_ bad as he was making it sound.

“So can General Skywalker,” he says flatly. “Don’t wish that you could be thrown into the thick of things until you’ve actually _seen_ the consequences.”

“I know,” she says, and makes a face. “But there has to be _something_ I can do to help.” She doesn’t add on the part that she really wants to say - she's a Jedi, no matter that she doesn’t have a master, and Jedi are supposed to help make the galaxy a better place. It’s her _job_ to help - and, yeah, maybe posing as a slave would suck, but she can’t just sit around doing nothing. She _can’t_.

“We’ll find something,” Captain Rex says, his voice sounding far more cheerful than before. “There’s always work to do in an army, sir. Uh. Commander… Initiate?”

“Let’s just go with Ahsoka,” she suggests.

Captain Rex sighs. “Tano.”

She crosses her arms. “Why do you have to be formal all the time, though?” she asks. “I’m not really part of the army, I don’t have an official rank.”

“You’re a Jedi,” Captain Rex says. “That means you do have some sort of standing. I think.”

Ahsoka rolls her eyes. “If you say so,” she says. “But I’m… still nowhere near being a padawan yet. Some people say…” She hesitates - she hadn’t really meant to hint at that last part.

“What, they say that because you don’t have a teacher, you’re not a Jedi yet?” Captain Rex scoffs.

“Yeah,” she says quietly. Where’s her conviction from earlier, that she’s a Jedi and she’s hear to help? In the quiet of the desert, under Captain Rex’s questioning, all her doubts come rushing back to her.

“Look, kid,” he says. “You’ve got a lightsaber on your belt and you’ve got the Force, and more than that you’re still a part of the Jedi Order. All of that makes you a Jedi, experienced or not.”

She takes a deep breath. “Yeah,” she says - firmly, this time. “I’m a Jedi.” Then she glances up at him. “But experience counts for a lot, doesn’t it?”

“In my book?” he says. “Experience counts for everything.”

Ahsoka grins. “And I barely have any experience,” she says. “So really, I shouldn’t have a rank; so you can just call me Ahsoka, can’t you?”

“Don’t worry,” Rex says, and grins. “This is Tatooine. You’ll get your experience soon enough.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Because how could I stick to just one POV?
> 
> Everyone's so excited about Ahsoka, I hope I can write her to all your standards :D


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> During Ahsoka's first morning on Tatooine, she makes a friend.

Ahsoka’s tired enough by the time they get to camp to fall face-first into the bunk Knight Skywalker shows her even before she gets a chance to look around.

In the morning, though, she pulls herself up and out of bed and finds herself in a tiny building. This must be camp, she supposes - right, Sarad had mentioned that ‘camp’ was actually a town they’d been living in, after the slavers had run from the oncoming army and the slaves had also run (in the opposite direction) to safety. A traditional camp, with tents and stuff, probably wouldn’t even last through one sandstorm.

Only one of the suns has risen when Ahsoka walks out the door, but people are already bustling around; evidently not all of the people had fled from the oncoming armies, for all that Ahsoka can see scorch marks on many of the buildings and can spot bits of broken droids in corners where salvagers haven’t gotten to yet.

“Hey, Snips!”

Ahsoka crosses her arms and glares. “Is it too hard for you to pronounce _Ah-so-ka_ , _Skyguy_?”

Knight Skywalker just shrugs. “This is Kelin Whitesun,” he says, gesturing to the human woman at his side. “She’s a volunteer in charge of logistics and supplies and… uh, that sort of thing.”

“It’s nice to meet you, Lady Whitesun,” Ahsoka says politely, uncrossing her arms and bowing.

“You’re going to be reporting to her for now,” Knight Skywalker finishes.

“ _What?_ I can fight!” she protests. “I’m a Jedi, I’m… technically part of the army!”

He raises an eyebrow. “That’s not what you were arguing with Rex last night.”

Ahsoka opens her mouth, then closes it again. “Okay,” she says, “So maybe I’m not technically part of the army. But I can still fight!”

“And what are you going to fight right now, a building?” Knight Skywalker asks. “We’re doing preparations and planning, now, not going into battle.”

Ahsoka subsides a little at that. It’s not as if she’s being _kept from_ fighting, really. Yet.

Knight Skywalker looks down at her, then sighs a little. “Go help Kelin do what needs doing,” he says. “Then after the mid-day rest, _if_ you’ve listened to her and not gotten into any trouble, you can show me how good you are with your lightsaber.”

Ahsoka _beams_. “Yes, sir, Master Skywalker!”

He winces at that. “Let’s… let’s not go with ‘Master Skywalker,’ okay? Stick to ‘Knight,’ or… just call me Anakin. Let’s do that. Same rules as with my mom.”

Oh, yeah, she can maybe see how calling him _Master Skywalker_ here on Tatooine may make people a little uncomfortable. But however normal it may be to call his mother _Shmi_ , it’s going to be weird calling him by his first name.

So she compromises. “Okay,” she says. “ _Skyguy_.” Then she turns to Lady Whitesun, ignoring the exasperated noise he makes. “What do you want me to do?”

“We’re focusing most on food and repair at the moment,” Lady Whitesun says, similarly ignoring Skyguy. She beckons to Ahsoka and starts to lead her away, into the rest of the city - though it’s barely a city, especially compared to Coruscant. “We’ve got enough army rations to last for a good while, but supplements are always good, and we’ve got a number of people to feed who aren’t soldiers. You’re probably going to be assigned to help repair, however; there are quite a few homes that collapsed during the fighting, and we can’t double up forever.”

Ahsoka pauses. She hadn’t even thought to ask whose bunk she was sleeping in. “I didn’t kick anyone out, where I was sleeping, did I?”

“My daughter stayed with me, for the night,” Lady Whitesun answers. “It won’t be a problem in the future, as long as we get these buildings repaired.”

“All right,” Ahsoka says, but bites her lip. She came here to help - well, and to deliver her message - but here she is, causing problems. “Lady Whitesun, I–”

“Kelin,” she corrects. “And you may have caused a bit of a stir, but you’re carrying important information and you’re eager to help; no sense dwelling on anything else.”

Ahsoka exhales. “You know Shmi, don’t you.” That sounds just like something she’d say, reassuring and comforting and looking forwards, though Kelin’s tone is a little different.

Lady Whitesun - Kelin - nods. “I helped her through Ani’s infancy,” she says. “And she watched Beru when I couldn’t.” She pauses, and Ahsoka glances around and realizes that they’ve reached the places that need repairs. These buildings are far more than scorched; the ones in best shape have holes blasted in them, and the ones in the worst shape are barely recognizable as buildings.

Ahsoka droops a bit. She tries to hide it, and she thinks she succeeds - but fixing these buildings isn’t going to be exciting, or adventurous. It’s important work, she _knows_ it’s important, even though it feels like she’s just being shoved off into a corner. I wanted to help, she tells herself, and this _is_ help, so don’t complain. With a deep breath, she straightens her spine again. “Where do I start?”

Kelin’s been watching her, and Ahsoka doesn’t know how much of that internal conflict she’d seen - hopefully _none_. But Shmi always knows everything, and if Kelin is a friend of Shmi’s…

“Over there,” Kelin says, and gestures towards a group of people. “Lanmi! Got another helping hand for you.”

A human girl, her hair in dozens of tiny braids that must have taken hours, looks up. “Thanks, Kelin,” she says, and turns to Ahsoka. “I’m Lanmi.”

“Ahsoka Tano,” she says, and grins. Lanmi looks only a few years older than her, though with humans it can be hard to tell.

Lanmi nods. “Do you have any experience with building houses?”

Ahsoka deflates a little bit. “Not… really. No.”

“It’s all right, neither do I!” calls a twi’lek who's maybe a little younger than her.

“Unfortunately true,” Lanmi mutters. “All right. You go work with Kastan; the two of you can learn together.”

Kastan grins at her, then beckons her over to where they’re working on smearing some goop over a crack. “I’m Kas,” they says. “Ahsoka, right?”

Ahsoka nods, and pauses. Hanging down between Kas’s green lekku are medium-length strands of brown hair.

“Yeah,” they say, “I’m half twi’lek, half human. Is that gonna be a problem?”

“No,” Ahsoka says. “Sorry for staring.”

Kas shrugs. “It’s fine. So, as far as people have told me, we need to go find all the cracks and fill them up with this.” They hold up a bucket of… well, goop.

Ahsoka peers at it dubiously. “What is it?”

“It’s…” Kas pauses. “I’m not actually sure. But it’ll keep out the sand and the wind, which is what’s really important - I once heard that a house had a crack in it that got too big, and a sandstorm started and the crack widened and widened and broke, and the whole house fell down.”

“Wow,” Ahsoka says, her eyes wide. Yesterday’s sandstorm, the one that had buried her ship, and almost her along with it… she could definitely imagine that destroying a house. “We should… fix those cracks, then.”

Lanmi snorts - oh, Ahsoka had almost forgotten that she was there. “That’s a bit of an exaggeration,” she says. “But yes, this is a very important job. We need you to get _every_ crack that you can find, even if they seem insignificant.”

Once she’s gone off to go supervise another group, Kas turns to Ahsoka. “You’re from offworld, aren’t you?” they ask. “What’s that like?”

“Well,” she says, and hesitates, turning to spread goop over one of the cracks in the house that’s longer than her montrals and lekku combined. “It’s different everywhere. I’m from Coruscant - well, not _from_ Coruscant, I was born on Shili and got taken to Coruscant when I was little. But anyways. I mostly just know what the Jedi Temple is like.”

“What _is_ it like?” Kas asks.

Ahsoka thinks for a long moment. “Quiet,” she says. “Except in the créche, or in the younglings’ dorms, or in the training salles or the classes or… well, maybe it’s not always quiet. But it always feels… calm.” She looks up and narrows her eyes. “Hey, if I lift you up, can you get the crack up there?”

Kas peers up. “What crack?”

“There’s one up there,” Ahsoka insists. “I felt it when I touched the wall.”

“Oh, right, montrals.” Now it’s Kas’s turn to stare at her. “What’s that like?”

Ahsoka doesn’t really know how to describe it. In her head, she knows that togruta hear differently than most species, that most beings can’t feel the shape of things if they place their hands on a wall and hum - but most beings don’t have the Force, either. She just shrugs. “I dunno,” she says. “It just sort of is. But seriously, can I lift you up so we can get this crack?”

“Yeah, sure,” Kas says. “But how–”

Ahsoka picks them up, ignoring their yelp. Kas isn’t really good at balancing - Ahsoka has to use the Force to keep them on her shoulders, giving tiny pushes whenever their center of mass gets too far off hers. Is this a Force thing, she wonders, being able to sense the half-twi’lek’s center of mass so easily? Or is it another togruta thing?

“Got it!” Kas says triumphantly, right before Ahsoka loses her concentration, and they lose their balance and fall into a heap on the sand.

“At least the sand is soft when it’s on the ground,” Kas says philosophically, and Ahsoka laughs.

This may not be fighting, this may not be saving the lives of thousands, she thinks. But it’s actually pretty fun - she can manage. She’ll do this work, and maybe even be glad about it, by the end of the day.

 

* * *

 

 

She may not _make_ it to the end of the day, Ahsoka thinks grumpily. Everything is hot, and sweaty, and _awful_.

Kas, of course, seems completely unaffected, moving from house to house just as cheerfully as ever.

“Don’t worry,” they say, and pat her shoulder. “It’s almost suns-high, we’ll take a break soon. Look at it this way - at least you remembered sunscreen!”

More like Lanmi had come over to her halfway through their work on a second house and told her to put it on. Ahsoka is grateful - otherwise her skin would be burnt to a crisp. Or at least to a very painful sunburn.

She and Kas had quickly developed a routine - go over a house looking for all the cracks in it, then move on to the next one. While they were working on the next house, the wall-repairing groups would come over and build over any holes in the walls; then Ahsoka and Kas would circle back around to that same house and fix the cracks that the wall-repairers had left. Overall, it had created a strange looping pattern that Ahsoka isn’t sure really _is_ a pattern, but Kas insists makes perfect sense.

“Noon break!” calls a voice, and several others repeated the call.

Kas sighs. “Finally,” they say. “C’mon, I’ll show you to the mess.”

“The mess?” Ahsoka asks.

“Well, it’s not really a mess hall,” Kas says. “But that’s what the troopers call it, and it sort of caught on - I mean, nobody really wants to eat army rations, so the army’s helping with the heavy lifting repairs and building and we’re helping with the cooking. So everyone eats together in the mess.”

They lead her over to a building that must have been some sort of meeting hall; it’s a little too small to fit everyone, but it’s intact and big enough to fit almost everyone, at least. There’s a line of various dishes, most of which Ahsoka doesn’t recognize; Kas picks up a plate from one end of a table and moves down the line, taking portions of the food.

Ahsoka follows hesitantly, picking up a plate and following, but she pauses before taking any of the food. “Is any of this okay for carnivores?”

Kas bites their lip, their twi’lek-sharp teeth worrying at it. “I’m not sure?” they say. “These probably are, though.” They gesture towards a high-rimmed bowl; Ahsoka peers inside and sees hundreds of tiny, wriggling insects.

“I dunno,” she says. “Sometimes bugs have strange chemicals in them that don’t go great with nonhuman physiology.” Kas isn’t full human, of course, but twi’leks are famous for being able to eat almost anything - they wouldn’t necessarily know if something had chemicals that were poisonous to other nonhumans.

“The insects should be fine,” someone says behind her - Knight Skywalker. Skyguy. “I’ve seen togruta eat them before - this dish in the middle, too,” he says, pointing out a purple-tinged pile.

Ahsoka peers at it. “It’s _purple_ ,” she says dubiously, but she takes some anyways, along with a handful of the insects. She’s not really used to her food still being alive and wriggling, but she’s hungry enough to deal. Besides, it’s not the first time - though the first time had involved a dare by a fellow seven-year-old and the discovery that Alderaanian light-bugs didn’t go well with togruta physiology. So she’s got a bit of a reason to be hesitant with strange bugs.

“How’s the repair work going?” he asks them as he fills up his own plate.

“Pretty good,” Kas says. “We’re making sure any cracks in walls and stuff are covered and safe, and we’ve got most of the northeast quarters fixed up!”

Skyguy raises an eyebrow. “You’ve done some solid work, then,” he says. “I know that the northeast quarters were some of the worst damaged. Are you doing the same work after the midday rest, Kastan?”

They shake their head. “I’m helping my dad out with ropeweaving then. I’m not sure what Ahsoka’s doing…”

Ahsoka tries her best to not look too hopeful. Just the _right_ amount of hopeful, not like she wants it so much that she’s practically bouncing off her seat.

“All right,” Skyguy says. “Why don’t you meet me back here, then, and you and I can help clean up, and then we’ll see how good you really are with your saber.”

“Yes! Yes, that sounds awesome. Good. Um.” Ahsoka takes a deep breath. “Yes.” Dammit, that was too many yesses.

It looks sort of like Knight Skywalker’s trying not to laugh. “I’ll see you then, Snips,” he says, and goes over to talk to Kelin.

Kas leads her over to a corner with chairs and a small table; they’re mostly quiet while eating. The weird purple meat tastes pretty good - though honestly, anything would taste pretty good after all the work they’d done.

“What was it like growing up here?” Ahsoka asks when they’re halfway through. Kas has asked her about the Temple all morning, about all the little details of growing up as a Jedi. Ahsoka hasn’t minded, not at all, but she has gotten a little curious.

Kas chews slowly, finishing their mouthful of food before replying. “Hard,” they say finally. “My mom got sold away when I was little, so I never really knew her. But my dad looked after me, and so did all the mothers in the community. My old master was a shopkeeper, but she didn’t like having me up in the front, ‘cause I’m only half twi’lek. So mostly I stayed in the back and did inventory and upkeep and repairs. It could have been a lot worse.”

Ahsoka’s been looking down at her plate, but her eyes aren’t really focused on it; she hadn’t realised that Kas had been a slave. Sure, she knew that Tatooine was mostly slaves and their masters, but Kas - Kas is younger than she is.

“It could have been a lot better, too,” she finds herself saying.

Kas grins at her, the expression so far removed from Ahsoka’s mood that she’s not sure what’s going on. “It’s better now,” Kas says. “I’m a person, and nobody’s gonna sell me away from Dad. We may not have a ton of room, but I’m helping rebuild the town, and we’re gonna get one of the houses that gets rebuilt.”

Ahsoka feels surprised, then realizes she shouldn’t be - of course people are going to be living in the houses that they’d helped fix. But _Kas_ is going to be living in one of the houses they helped fix. Ahsoka’s been helping real people, today, not just doing some abstract ‘helping out.’

“Do you know what you want to do?” she asks. “What you want to be when you grow up?”

Kas shrugs. “Not yet. But I’ve got all the time in the world to figure it out.” They smile again, and their eyes drift over Ahsoka’s shoulder. “I think Anakin’s ready to go teach you stuff.”

“Probably.” Ahsoka takes a deep breath, tries to center herself. Today - this entire mission - has been really up and down. “Thanks, Kas.”

“It’s no problem. It was nice to meet you, Ahsoka!” They stand, then pause. “See you tomorrow, maybe?”

“I’ll check with… with Anakin,” she promises. “See you sometime, though.”

Kas waves and heads off, their lekku swinging as they skip out of the mess and into the open air, where the suns are just past their midpoint.

Ahsoka is still a little lost in thought when Knight Skywalker comes over.

“I didn’t realize they used to be a slave,” she says quietly when he pauses by her seat. “They’re just a kid.”

Knight Skywalker sighs softly and sits down - next to her, not across from her. “Except for you, everyone who’s still here used to be a slave of some kind,” he says.

“Everyone?” It can’t be _everyone_ , she thinks. That’s… too many.

“Outright slavery, indentured servitude, people who owed so much that they could never pay it all back…” Knight Skywalker says. “There are dozens of types of slavery, obvious or hidden.” He hesitates for a moment, like he wants to add something else, but he never ends up saying it. “Help me with the dishes, and we can talk about your lightsaber experience.”

Okay. She can cope with that, even if the weight of all those people being slaves still feels like it’s pressing down on her.

“I know mostly form V, the shien variant,” Ahsoka says as they collect the dishes and bring them over to the washers. Ahsoka grimaces a bit when she sees them - she hopes that there’s at least one non-sonic shower somewhere in the city, however rare water is; sonics are _not_ fun without montral protections. “I use a reverse grip no matter what form I’m using, though. Otherwise my wrists start to hurt.” She remembers when Master Kenobi had taught her class, just a few weeks ago, and she’s promised herself that she’s not going to apologize for her reverse grip any more.

Knight Skywalker just nods. “I’m best with ataru and the djem so variant of form V, though I know a good amount of soresu as well. We’re reasonably well-matched there, then. Here, hand me those.” She hands him her handful of dishes and he finishes loading up the sonic dishwasher before standing.

The mess is mostly deserted by this point; there are a few people finishing up their meals in the corner, and a few more picking up dishes just as they had, but for the most part it’s empty.

“Where are we going to practice?” Ahsoka asks. “Here?” She eyes the chairs and tables dubiously; Knight Skywalker may be good with ataru, but she’s definitely not comfortable jumping on top of random furniture without knowing if it’ll hold her weight.

“Well, we definitely don’t want to go outside,” Knight Skywalker says. “So here is the best choice. There are a few too many things in the way, though, so…”

Ahsoka can sense a swell in the Force as he concentrates, and the tables and chairs in the center of the room slowly, slowly lift, and stack themselves against the wall.

“Show-off,” someone calls - Sarad, who’s pulling up a chair to sit at the edge of the ring Knight Skywalker has cleared.

He doesn’t dignify that with a response, though Ahsoka can see him rolling his eyes as he leads her over to the ring.

“All right,” he says, and Ahsoka prepares herself. “Show me what you’ve got.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A note on the whole 'montrals' thing: as far as I know, all we know about montrals are that they're "sensory organs" that allow togruta to hear. That's, honestly, _boring_ , they're giant hornlike things sticking out of the tops of their heads, we can explore that more. So I've combined it into a sort of hearing-proprioception-echolocation type of sense, which has very vague specifics as to its limits at the moment. A togruta's montrals grow more pointed and bigger as they age (as we've seen), probably really starting to be effective around puberty; so togruta can hear things pretty well before then, but they slowly gain the proprioception-echolocation bit as they age, and their range steadily increases too.
> 
> This is all just me making stuff up, by the way. If any of this is contradicted by canon... well, canon contradicts itself in some places, so I think I'm good :)


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lightsaber sparring is only a brief reprieve from the realities of a war.

Anakin is honestly pretty impressed by how good Ahsoka is with her lightsaber; she doesn’t come close to beating him, of course, but her stance is solid and she keeps her lightsaber up and ready, despite the difficulty of a reverse grip.

“Be careful with your offense,” he warns her as they circle each other. “You’re going to need to put more focus into that, because the reverse grip leaves you more open to retaliation.”

Ahsoka strikes at him, darting forwards stabbing towards him. He blocks, but calls “Hold!” before they’ve disengaged.

With his free hand, he pokes her in the stomach. “You’ve left your lower body entirely unguarded,” he says. “Even fighting someone with only one lightsaber, that can be dangerous. Your opponent could kick you - and that can be _bad_ , depending on what kind of legs they have.”

“Some people - bounty hunters - carry around knives,” Beru says, still watching from the sidelines. “You don’t want to get knifed in the gut, trust me.”

Anakin and Ahsoka both turn to Beru to stare at her.

“What?” she asks. “Oh, _I_ haven’t been knifed in the gut.”

“… Okay,” Anakin says. “Let’s just… keep talking about lightsabers, then. Try starting lower and slashing up, instead of stabbing; that’ll give you a better chance to shield yourself.”

Ahsoka backs away and waits until he nods that he’s ready before darting forwards again, lower this time, and slashing up.

“Good,” Anakin says, and she beams. “You still have openings, but a lot fewer.” He tilts his head, thinking - what are her strengths? How can she blend them together to become stronger? “You’ve worked with the laser droids, practicing deflection, right?” It’s one of Form V’s strengths, both shien and djem so; shien was specifically developed to counter blaster bolts, so of course she’ll have experience with that. The transition from there to lightsaber-to-lightsaber combat is the basis of the difference between shien and djem so, and he knows how to start teaching _that_.

“Of course,” she says proudly. “I’m at the top of my clan.”

“That’s one place your reverse grip is definitely helping you,” he says. “Most Jedi have trouble guarding their back and their front at the same time, but it’s easier for you to get more angles of deflection around your entire body.” He tilts his head to the side, considers her form, and how she moves between attacking and defending. “Think about how you hold your lightsaber when you’re practicing blaster bolt deflections, and try blocking my attacks like that.” They’re normally taught that deflecting blasters and deflecting other weapons are completely different disciplines, but it’s not so different that blaster bolt deflections aren’t a good starting point.

Ahsoka frowns a bit, but nods, stepping into a more defensive stance. “Ready,” she says.

He does his best to keep his attacks at a level she can handle. Anakin’s trained with people not as good as him - his mom and Master Obi-Wan both like him to help out with the Strays from time to time. But it’s still tricky; he’s used to going all out, not holding back.

It only takes him a few seconds to get through her defense, then his lightsaber is hovering just above her shoulder. They’re on training strength, just strong enough to leave mild burns, but those are still pretty painful; there’s no reason to actually tag her if he doesn’t need to.

“Breathe,” he says, and steps back, circling her again. “Close your eyes. Remeber what the training salles in the Temple feel like, and pull that feeling around you. This is just more deflection practice.”

Ahsoka’s eyes are closed and she’s breathing slowly, calmly, but he can tell that she’s still struggling with the concept.

“All right,” he says, and powers down his lightsaber. “Let’s take a break.”

“But - I almost had it!” she protests, opening her eyes. “I was so close!”

“Maybe you were,” Anakin says. “Maybe you weren’t. Either way, _I’m_ starting to overheat, and you still need to learn about taking water breaks, Snips.”

Ahsoka sighs. “ _Fine_.” She powers down her lightsaber too, clipping it to her belt.

Anakin goes to get two cups of water from the small kitchen that’s attached to the mess. It’s busy here any time of day, even during the midday rest; food never stops being needed.

“You two done swinging your fancy laser swords around in the mess?” Arim calls from where he’s washing dishes, his voice barely audible over the sonic vibrations.

“For now,” Anakin says. “Kids are _exhausting_.”

Arim snorts.

“ _You’re_ a kid, kid,” old Venet says, grinning with their half-missing teeth. “Come complain when you find your first grey hair, little Ani.”

Anakin sighs, gets the water, and leaves before they tease him any more. He’d say that this is one of the downsides of going back to your home planet - everyone else treats you like their grandkid, or long-lost nephew; he _would_ say that, if he wanted to be forced to admit that he didn’t really mind the teasing. It’s like the way Jesse is always ribbing at Rex, and how Rex keeps an eye on all the ones the clones call ‘shinies.’ It means they’re family, in a sense, and Anakin’s always liked having more of that.

That doesn’t mean he’s ever going to say it out loud, even to Beru or his mom. That would just make the teasing worse.

When he gets back to the mess, Beru and Ahsoka are kneeling on the floor, looking at a loose map Beru’s drawn with the thin layer of sand that people have tracked in, supplemented by cutlery.

“So then the knife is the line where the droids start?” Ahsoka asks.

“No, the spoon,” Beru corrects. “The knife is where the sinking sands start.”

“Wouldn’t it make more sense for sinking sands to be represented with a spoon, and droids to be represented with a knife?” Ahsoka asks.

“No,” Beru says.

“Yes,” Anakin says, and sits down, passing the cup of water to Ahsoka. “Don’t let yourself get dehydrated,” he warns her. “Any place, but especially here. If you start feeling thirsty, let someone know, and they’ll show you where to get a drink. In a pinch, you’ll be fine with fruit juice - it won’t be toxic to you - but it might give you a stomach ache, so try to find water first.”

Ahsoka nods, then takes a sip from the water and sighs. “Wow,” she says. “I didn’t even notice I was thirsty. Thanks, Skyguy.”

He almost wants to say _you have a right to as much water as you want_ , but that’s advice to tell to slaves, not to Jedi padawans. Initiates. She already knows that - the problem with Ahsoka is reminding her to pay attention to what she needs, on this planet that can leech the life from you if you’re not careful.

“So,” he says, and gestures down at the makeshift map. “This is a pretty bad representation of Gardulla’s palace, but still. Tell me what you think.”

“The big problems…” Ahsoka stares at the map for a long moment. “It’s really well-defended; that’s a lot of droids, and she’s got defense, too, which is easier than offense.”

Not always, Anakin wants to say, but he’s not going to interrupt her.

She tilts her head to the side. “You could try attacking with all your forces hitting one point, here,” she says, tracing a line on the map. “But then the droids can circle around and push you into the knife. Uh, the sinking sands. Would surrounding it and hitting multiple points at once work?”

“It might,” Anakin says. “But what are the problems with that strategy?”

Ahsoka grimaces when she sees it. “Numbers,” she says. “And it’s faster for her to move her troops around one point than it is for us to move ours around in a big circle, so she’d have them in position in time.”

“We could sneak around,” Beru points out, her tone carefully neutral - testing Ahsoka to see how well she remembered what might have been nothing but background information.

Ahsoka’s eyes narrow. “You said just last night that that wouldn’t work,” she says.

Anakin grins. “Good catch,” he says. “You’ve got a good eye for strategy.”

“But I couldn’t think of anything that would actually work,” she protests.

“Neither can we,” he points out. “But you made a good start.” He stands with a groan - he’s going to be a little sore from lightsaber practice; it’s a good thing Ahsoka’s here, or he might start worrying about getting out of shape.

Ahsoka’s neck cranes up to look at him from her seat on the floor. “What now?” she asks.

“Now, I have to go check up on everything and make sure the troops haven’t gotten into trouble,” he says.

“Can I–”

“Maybe another day,” he says. “For now… um. Go… meditate on what you’ve learned so far today?”

Ahsoka pouts.

“I know, I know,” Anakin says. “Meditation is boring. But if you don’t think it over, how are you ever going to know what it means?”

“You stole that saying from your mother,” Ahsoka says.

Anakin nods, not even the least bit ashamed. “That makes it even more true, doesn’t it?”

She clearly can’t argue with that, and settles down with a sigh.

“Maybe try finding a spot outside,” he suggests. “Not somewhere in the sun, but somewhere you can see the sky. That usually helps me.”

“I’ll give it a try,” Ahsoka says, but she doesn’t sound optimistic.

Oh, well. It had taken Anakin years to really _get_ meditation, even with Obi-Wan and his mom and Qui-Gon and what felt like half the Jedi Order all trying to help.

Obi-Wan had been the one to help him find a good visualization for his mind - a starfighter floating through the void of space, feeling the starlight on its hull but untouched by any gravitational wells. And his mom had helped immensely, of course, but meditation came easily for her, and Anakin had never wanted to be still. It was really Master Dooku who had helped him get the final piece - the dignified Jedi had taken Ani up to the very peak of the Jedi Temple, where they technically weren’t supposed to go. He’d said that Qui-Gon had had the same difficulties truly meditating, talking about Qui-Gon like he was still a padawan barely older than Ani, not a dignified Jedi Master. Then…

“Listen to the bustle below,” Dooku had told him. “It’s distant, quiet. Your emotions, your worries, your intrusive thoughts - those are the same, far away. Now. Look up at the sky. See how it stretches endlessly, around the planet, into the black of space; air fills it, and starlight, and yet it is also clear. Breathe; your breath flows out into the air, the atmosphere. Let yourself be the sky, young Skywalker.”

 

* * *

 

 

Rex is waiting for them when Anakin and Beru exit the mess, leaving Ahsoka to find her own place to meditate.

“How’d lightsaber practice go, sir?” Rex asks.

“She’s _good_ ,” Anakin says. “Could do with a little more work on modifying her form, and she needs to learn how to actually defend, but what she needs is mostly practice in live situations and…” He trails off.

Rex and Beru are making the same face at each other, one that says _can you believe this_ , and _no I can’t_.

“What?” he says. “ _What_?”

“Nothing, sir,” Rex says, his face blank. Except for the corner of his mouth, that’s twitching a bit. Like he wants to laugh. Beru’s eyes are wide and far, far too innocent.

“Fine, don’t tell me,” he says, and crosses his arms. “And I won’t tell you about the _amazing_ idea I had for breaking into Gardulla’s palace.”

“You had an idea?” The humor drops out of Rex’s face. “What is it?”

Oops, now he actually has to come up with an idea. This is what everyone means about _impulsivity_ , he thinks regretfully, and blurts out the first thing that comes to mind. “We lure her out,” he says. “She’s… oh.”

Beru crosses her arms. “What?”

He could tease her like she’d teased him, but this is… actually a pretty good idea. “She’s tapped in to our long-range communications,” he says. “So we come up with some sort of lie and tell the Jedi Council that that’s our next plan; she’ll send out a group to stop us, we defeat them - then we steal their armor and head back to her palace. We’re let in as her own bodyguards.”

Beru whistles. “All right, Skywalker,” she says. “That’s a good one.”

“Turn her own bugs against her?” Rex grins, his smile wolfish. “That’s definitely a strategy I can get behind.”

Anakin hadn’t thought of it that way, but it was what they were doing - turning her own strength against her, taking what she had stolen and making it their own.

“Let’s discuss this somewhere more private,” Beru says. “Not the war room, but somewhere enclosed.”

Beneath the sky and above the sand, it’s easy enough to spot people trying to listen in, but Beru’s right; there’s a lot of comfort to be found in a closed room. Besides, they’re not truly in the open desert; eavesdroppers could be hiding behind the houses, in the spaces in between buildings, though Anakin can’t think of any reason why anyone in this city would be spying on them.

Beru leads them to an unoccupied house - just rebuilt, maybe even one of the ones Ahsoka and Kas had helped with. Anakin reaches out with the Force, and feels nothing listening in, no tiny humming of electronic bugs, and nods that they’re clear; Rex closes the door, which seals automatically to keep the wind and sand out along with any more distant eavesdroppers.

“What kind of message would convince her to send out her guards?” Rex asks. “And _just_ her guards - we don’t want to have to explain away why they left with a squad of droids and came back with none.”

Anakin grimaces - another problem with the plan. But it’s the best one they’ve come up with in ages, and if it was a spur-of-the-moment idea to try and refocus the conversation, they don’t need to know that, do they?

“We also don’t want there to be too many guards,” Beru says slowly. “Or too few. Too many, and we may not have enough people to be disguised, not if we still want the army to attack after we’re in; too few, and we won’t have enough people on the inside to be of any use.”

“Though if it’s anything more than two, you and I could be on the inside,” Anakin points out. “We could probably manage, just the two of us.”

“But we could manage _better_ with more backup,” Beru counters. “Well, backup who knows what they’re doing.”

“You should take Kix at least,” Rex says, crossing his arms. “To deal with any injuries, and to help with Gardulla’s slaves - they'll be faster to believe us if we can help them with any of  _their_  injured.”

Beru nods. “Kix, Jesse, Lefter, Seal, and Jak as a base team, then,” she says. “They can all lie decently, and Jesse, Lefter, and Jak have picked up some Huttese. Seal’s been working on lockpicking.”

Anakin taps his fingers against the edge of his chair, trying to get himself to _think_. “What could convince her to send out people, but not droids, to meet us?” he says. “Too big of a threat, and she’ll send people and droids; too small of a threat, and she’ll send _just_ droids.”

“Something she doesn’t want droids to deal with,” Rex suggests. “She’s _allied_ with the Seppies, but she’s not actually one herself, is she? There’s got to be some conflict there.”

“There could be,” Beru says slowly. “We should look over old battles, see if there’s been any subtle tension between her forces and the droid troops.”

“Snapper’s got a good eye for that sort of stuff,” Rex says. “Hardcase can probably help with that one, too.”

“Careful,” Anakin warns - the word echoes strangely in the Force, though, and he frowns. “We don’t want this spreading around to too many people. We don’t know _where_ Gardulla’s bugs are, after all.” The really weird thing is that those words _don’t_ echo in the Force; it’s just that initial _careful_ that’s important.

“However careful we have to be, we also have to be quick,” Beru argues. “We’ve got _under a week_ to make this happen, remember?”

“How could I forget?” Anakin says, but doesn’t push that direction any more when he hears the tension in her tone. “Beru, why don’t you sweep around for bugs, then? We know we won’t find all of them with a cursory sweep, but we may be able to find where they’re clustered.”

Beru sighs, leaning her head down to rest it in her hands. “Yeah. Yeah, I can do that. This whole situation is just…”

“Too familiar?” Rex suggests.

She grimaces and nods. “Bugs, slaves, sneaking around - I can still do it, I’m still good at it, but…”

“Memories,” Anakin says. His mother had never really been comfortable with the idea of ocean worlds, but after Mon Calamari, after her knighting… even the Temple’s aquariums had made her uncomfortable for a while. “But you won on Kamino, and we’re going to win here, too.”

Beru laughs. “If you think that what happened on Kamino was _winning_ , you don’t have the whole story, Skywalker,” she says.

Anakin crosses his arms. “Then explain that to me, Whitesun.”

“We got lucky,” Beru says, her tone bitter. “We got lucky they weren’t expecting a direct confrontation so soon, we got lucky they weren’t expecting Boba’s plans, we got lucky that it was Shmi and not some other Jedi who didn’t know how to read subtlety. We got off the planet safe and sound, and left the army unguarded to be taken by the Jedi.”

“If you think what happened on Kamino was _losing,_ then _you’re_ wrong,” Rex says firmly, drawing their attention to him. “We were always going to have to fight, and better that we fight than the whole Republic gets wiped out.”

“Is it, though?” Beru says.

There’s a tickle at the back of his mind, something in the Force, and Anakin frowns. Is it related to this discussion? Or is something else happening?

“I think so,” Rex says. “I bet the brothers who’d died would disagree. But maybe they wouldn’t, and besides, it happened. We can’t just undo it.”

“Something’s wrong,” Anakin says quietly.

“Lots of things are wrong,” Beru snaps. “The Republic using a slave army, Gardulla and–”

“No, I mean something’s wrong _now_ ,” Anakin says, standing up and starting to pace.

The tickle at the back of his mind grows, until he can’t ignore it - but it’s not coming from _him_ , he can tell. He has no reason to feel that sense of fear, sitting safe in a house, no enemies around.

Beru looks up, frowning. “Can you hear that?”

He can’t hear anything out of the ordinary. Then he inhales - and there’s a hint of smoke, a touch of ozone. Lightsaber burn.

“Something’s happening outside,” Rex says, listening to his comm. “Nobody knows what’s going on, but it sounds like–”

“Sith,” Anakin says, and _runs_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Form V has two primary disciplines, shien and djem so; shien is the traditional form, strong against multiple opponents and weaker against single opponents. Ahsoka's reverse-grip is an unorthodox but previously used variant of shien. Djem so, one of Anakin's primary forms, was developed primarily for lightsaber-on-lightsaber combat; it's, as far as I can tell, the form that relies most on sheer power, with Force-enhanced strikes, meaning that Anakin's base strategy is hitting things _really really_ hard.
> 
> All of _that_ info is as canon as canon can be (ie: not very, but still a bit), pulled from Wookieepedia.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> During her first afternoon on Tatooine, Ahsoka makes an enemy.

Ahsoka can’t really say that she’s ever been very good at meditating. She’s not _bad_ at it, she’s just… not very good.

Knight Skywalker told her to, though, so she leaves the mess and tries to find a good place where she can see the sky.

One good thing about the way these buildings are built - there are plenty of overhangs and crevices where she can sit and be in the shade, but still be outside.

She finds a little overhang, just barely tall enough so that she can scoot under it while seated, away from the main bustle of people working, and closes her eyes.

_Breathe in, and out_. Let herself relax; let the tension drain out of her, let her thoughts quiet down.

Let herself not be bothered by the grainy sand that’s starting to stick to her legs, ugh.

It doesn’t take her much longer than it would normally to start meditating, though; maybe Skyguy was right about the sky and the sand being the right place to meditate. There’s something… she doesn’t quite know what, but it feels like there’s something about it that makes everything clearer.

Ahsoka doesn’t really have a good visualization for her mind yet, but she doesn’t need to sink down that deep right now; she’s meditating on a topic, not meditating on herself.

What has she learned today?

She’s learned some nice tricks for lightsaber combat, and that she has to watch her defense in saber-to-saber combat; Knight Skywalker had told her to think of it just like blaster deflection, but she hadn’t been very good at thinking of it that way. Was that because his advice wasn’t helpful or because she wasn’t used to doing it? Probably the second one, she decides.

She’d learned about Tatooine, about what was necessary for building houses in the desert - a foundation of metal rods, clay stretched over them and pounded into solidity. Arched shapes, for stability, and insulation to keep out the heat and the cold alike. It’s important to seal the cracks, to find them and make sure they don’t grow too big, don’t damage the building. Kas had told her–

_Except for you, every single person here used to be a slave_.

The thought - the words - almost reverberate in her mind. They’re _true_ , and the Force wants her to _know_ they’re true, though she can’t imagine why.

Ahsoka should meditate on them, then - what are all the nuances of that phrase, the semantic details? What is it implying and not implying?

But her montrals are sensing something strange. It sounds like there’s someone walking down the street, but she can feel clearly with the Force that nobody’s there. Why would she be able to sense something with her montrals but not the Force? It’s probably something weird with her montrals - maybe those bugs she ate weren’t as safe as Skyguy said they were.

But Ahsoka opens her eyes, blinking for a minute in the bright light, and sees… someone.

Someone who _isn’t there_ in the Force.

They’re wearing a sand-colored cloak, but under it their clothes are dark; trying to blend in, but not very hard.

Very, very slowly, barely even breathing, Ahsoka stands and follows.

The figure makes their way through the city’s alleyways - the spaces between buildings that aren’t really roads but aren’t not roads, either. They flatten themselves on walls and hide in what little shadows there are whenever somebody else passes; it had been pure luck that they hadn’t seen Ahsoka, and that Ahsoka had sensed-but-not-sensed them.

Laughing voices come near and Ahsoka freezes as the figure does; Ahsoka has a crevice she can duck into, but the figure is stuck in the open.

Or they would be, if they weren’t able to leap onto the building’s high roof, clearly boosting themself with the Force.

Ahsoka swallows. This isn’t some unfamiliar Force-null being or someone who’d unknowingly picked up an inhibitor. This person is hiding _deliberately_.

She’s heard stories, spread around the créche in whispers, about the Sith having that power, about Master Kenobi defeating the Sith as a padawan, lost in the Naboo generator complex, taunted and provoked by someone whose presence he couldn’t even sense.

This - whoever they are - stops in front of a house, nondescript, exactly like the others. Except that Ahsoka can sense Knight Skywalker inside, along with two others; Sarad and Captain Rex, probably.

The figure bends down to the door - listening, or trying to. Hah, Ahsoka could have told them that all the doors were sealed well enough that neither sand nor sound could get out.

They grimace, then stand. Then look around, to one side, then the other.

Straight towards Ahsoka.

Ahsoka freezes.

The being’s eyes dart to her face, then her clothes - then the lightsaber at her belt.

She can see two blades at her opponent’s belt, straight pale hilts gleaming in the suns’ light. Ahsoka knows who this is, has read through all the information available to Jedi and to messengers, can put together twin lightsabers and dark clothes and pale grey skin marked with darker tattoos.

“Asajj Ventress,” she says, and draws her lightsaber, the green light almost looking dim under the light of the suns. “What are _you_ doing here?”

Ventress crosses her arms. “What, now they’re sending _children_ to fight? The Jedi Order really _has_ fallen far.”

Ahsoka grits her teeth and doesn’t reply. Ventress is trying to provoke her, she can tell, it’s really obvious. And she’s _not_ going to react.

“What are you _doing_ here,” Ahsoka repeats, lowering her stance and readying her lightsaber.

“Evidently?” Ventress says, and bares her teeth. “Killing you.” She draws her lightsabers and ignites them, burning red against the yellow sand, and strikes.

Ahsoka blocks, barely, and says a swear very quietly in her head. Ventress is very, very good at lightsaber combat - Ahsoka can’t tell what form she’s using, so it’s either a Sith form or a combination, but either way she doesn’t know if she can counter it. She can feel the panic welling up, in the pit of her stomach. There’s a very real chance that she’s going to die here, facing a Separatist assassin, facing a darksider.

But there are people relying on her, Kas and Lanmi and Kelin and all the others. They _can’t_ lose, can’t go back to slavery. Ventress is probably working with Gardulla, trying to defeat the 501st, trying to enslave the people all over again. Ahsoka can _not_ let that happen, not to Kas, not to _anyone_. She can’t let that panic overcome her. She can’t beat Ventress, not without being far better than she is. But that doesn’t mean there’s nothing she can do.

Master Kenobi had told them about soresu, about blocking and blocking and waiting.

She’s the best in her clan at blaster deflections.

Ahsoka wraps that certainty around herself and shifts her stance the tiniest bit and blocks, and blocks, and waits, just like Knight Skywalker had told her to.

It’s not that simple, of course; Ventress is just _better_ than she is. Ahsoka has to stay constantly moving, constantly focused, or else she’s dead. But it does mean that when Ventress leaps over her head in a twirl and strikes at Ahsoka’s back while she’s still midair, Ahsoka can block it, and when Ventress darts in faster than should be possible to try and spear Ahsoka’s chest through, her lightsaber comes up and pushes Ventress’s aside.

People have started to notice the fight, of course; however out of the way they are, a lightsaber battle is going to gather attention. Nobody’s stupid enough to try to help, though, or even watch openly, which Ahsoka is thankful for; she can’t defend herself _and_ someone else.

“You can’t keep this up forever,” Ventress hisses, breaking away for a moment. “Look at yourself; you’re almost falling over. Wouldn’t it be so much easier to just give in, little padawan?”

Ahsoka may be almost falling over, and it may be easier to just give in, but she’s not a padawan - she’s one of the Strays, and everyone knows that the Strays never do what they’re told.

Ahsoka bares her teeth in a sharp grin; sometimes she loves being carnivorous, if only to see the looks on omnivores’ faces when she smiles. “You came here to spy and you couldn’t even listen in on a single conversation,” Ahsoka says. “I’m not the one who’s failed, here!”

And, okay, she’s tired of blocking, waiting time’s over. She darts in, and sweeps up with her lightsaber, cutting towards the handles of Ventress’s - if she can destroy those lightsabers, this fight will be _done_.

Ventress sneers and strikes down, fiercely, catching Ahsoka’s blade on her two and pressing in.

The sand on the street is hard-packed, not the loose sand that Ahsoka can sink into, but she feels it starting to crack beneath her feet. Her arms start to tremble; she _is_ tired, and Ventress knows it.

Then Ventress looks up, looks almost startled - and flies backwards, smacking hard into the building on the other side of the street and crumpling to the ground.

“Are you okay?” Knight Skywalker demands, lowering his arm - he’d thrown Ventress away with the Force, Ahsoka realizes. “Ahsoka! Are you hurt?”

“I’m fine,” she says, taking a deep, shaking breath. “I’m fine.”

“Not for long, you’re not,” Ventress growls, pulling herself back to her feet.

“Ahsoka,” Knight Skywalker says calmly. “Get back. I’ll handle this.”

“But–” She can help! She held her own, didn’t she?

He glares at her. “Now!”

Fine, Ahsoka thinks, backing up a few steps. Sarad and Rex are standing near the door that Skyguy had come out of, though Sarad is slowly starting to circle around to the side. I’ll back up. But that doesn’t mean I can’t help, if I see the opportunity for it.

 

* * *

 

 

“Sunken so low that you sent your padawan after me, Skywalker?” Ventress says.

“She’s not my padawan,” Anakin says, feeling a strange twinge of emotions as he says it - but that’s not important right now. “But she did pretty well holding her own, didn’t she?”

Ventress rolls her eyes. “Oh, a real prodigy,” she says, a touch of bitterness in her voice. “The Jedi are just letting random initiates wander around, then? Next you’ll be sending out créchelings to fight in the Republic’s wars, and not even caring how many of them we slaughter.”

Anakin tightens his grip on his lightsaber. Ventress likes attacking mid-insult, so he has to be at the ready. “At least anyone who chooses to fight for us will be free to do so,” he says. “I’m not the one here protecting _slavers_ , Ventress.” Careful, he thinks to himself - the clones aren’t free, and she may know it. They need to be freed, but–

Ventress takes advantage of his split-second distraction to charge forwards and strike; he blocks and strikes back, and they begin their usual dance.

Beru won’t be able to help here, he thinks as he slices down at Ventress, only for her to spin out of the way. Beru can’t risk using explosives at this range, and she can’t risk shooting me if Ventress dodges her blasters, either. That leaves… hand-to-hand or knifework, which is _not_ ideal against twin lightsabers. He’s on his own, in this fight.

Just as he thinks it, of course, Ventress attacks, twisting around like a whirlwind, then using her momentum to leap up and away onto a building’s roof.

Beru shoots, but Ventress deflects the blasts almost casually.

“Foolish little Jedi,” she says. “How does it feel, to know that your failures are piling up? You’ll never be able to free them all.”

“Just _watch me_ ,” he says, and leaps after her, up onto the roof.

Ventress… was expecting that. Taunting him. Damn it. She kicks him, hard, just as he’s about to strike, and he’d left his lower body undefended.

Anakin really hopes that Ahsoka wasn’t watching that.

He winces as he tumbles to the ground, stomach threatening to revolt from the force of her blow; but he still rolls aside and away from her downwards thrust, sinking straight into the ground where he’d fallen. A thought flashes across his mind - that’ll leave an interesting bit of glass in the ground - and then they’re exchanging blows again, back and forth.

In the background, he can hear Rex calling for backup, but whatever backup comes will have the same problem Beru does - they can’t fire at Ventress without risking hitting him, and Ventress knows it.

They break away for a moment, circling each other, watching each other for breaks in their defense - Anakin is stronger than her, physically, but she’s far more slippery. He’d have to back her up to a cliff’s edge to overpower her by force, and there definitely aren’t any of those nearby. But still, there has to be some way to get through her guard. A distraction, somehow?

Oh, no, he thinks, with a brief flash of premonition - not the kind the Force gives him, but that sinking feeling when he just _knows_ that someone is going to do something stupid.

Ahsoka steps forwards and charges Ventress.

The assassin smirks and blocks her attack, then strikes back at the initiate. Ahsoka blocks, too - there’s a funny feeling in his chest when he sees that she’s taken his words to heart, but that’s not important right now.

Anakin attacks, but Ventress isn’t really distracted by Ahsoka; her blades spin over to block Anakin’s, and Ahsoka leaps forwards again, and Ventress leans over and kicks her into a wall. She falls to the ground, whimpers a little, and doesn’t get up.

“ _Ahsoka!_ ”

“What a pity,” Ventress taunts. “Not even a padawan, and she’s ready to die for the Jedi Order.” She raises her lightsabers, ready to kill Ahsoka, stunned on the ground.

Anakin can feel the fury building inside him, the need to _protect_ her, but he can’t, he _can’t_ let it control him, he knows what happens when he lets go like that, and it’s never good.

He strikes at Ventress anyways, trying to keep her blades occupied, trying to keep them away from the girl lying in the sand. He attacks, and Ventress dodges as she always does, out of the way, off to the side - away from Ahsoka.

She backs away, then; he’s confused until he realizes that if he attacks her, he leaves Ahsoka undefended. Anakin can’t let her taunt him, not this time.

“What are you going to do now, Skywalker?” Ventress says, her voice soft, almost kind except for how she means the words to cut. “Defend the child, lose the war? You Jedi never know how to make hard choices–”

A tiny metal sphere bounces into the sand at Ventress’s feet.

_Beep_.

Rex grabs them from behind and drags him and Ahsoka into the house, sealing the door shut behind them, just before the grenade explodes.

It’s deafening, even through layers of clay and metal, and shakes the house; but they’re not dead when Anakin opens his eyes again, so that’s enough. Ahsoka’s eyes are open, too, and blinking like she’s not quite sure what’s going on.

“That was stupid,” Rex says.

Anakin nods. “Ahsoka, that–”

“ _Both of you_ ,” Rex snaps, shifting his glare between Anakin and Ahsoka. “Tano, he _told_ you to stay out of it. You need to _listen_ to your commanding officer, or you’re going to get yourself killed, and everyone else along with you. General, you need to remember that you have backup coming - all you needed to do was distract Ventress until we could make sure everyone was far enough away that a grenade would be safe.”

Anakin winces. Yes, that… would have been the smart thing to do.

Ahsoka is looking down, also - though that might be because her eyes don’t look fully focused.

“Let’s make sure Ventress is gone,” Anakin says quietly. “Then we should go to medical. Both of us,” he says, before Rex says anything.

The street is a smoking crater when they open the door, half the houses full of cracks and crumbling edges - but none of them are completely destroyed.

Beru is pacing around the edge of the blackened hole in the ground, talking to a squad of scout troopers; they salute and head off, probably to make sure that Ventress has left the city.

Rather than listen to Beru’s no doubt well-deserved lecture, he places a hand on Ahsoka’s shoulder and guides her away, to where they’ve set up their infirmary. It’s not a long walk, but it’s not a short walk; they complete it in silence, with Anakin keeping Ahsoka steady. She almost definitely has a concussion, which makes him worry, a tight, twisted feeling deep down in the pit of his stomach.

When they get to the infirmary, Kix takes one look at them and sighs. “Sit,” he orders Ahsoka, then holds up a finger. “Track my finger with your eyes… okay, now close your eyes, with your montrals.” He runs her through a few more tests - how does Kix even _know_ how to check togruta for concussions - and comes to the conclusion that yes, she does have a concussion.

“Lie down for the rest of today, in a dark, still room. No heavy lifting for a day and a half. No lightsaber work for three days, minimum,” he orders, “And you’re going to sleep with a medical headdress on.”

Ahsoka pouts, but doesn’t protest.

Anakin lets Kix check him over, mostly because he knows that he’s not badly injured; Kix smears a few layers of bacta over his and Ahsoka’s bruises, then goes to help out a being who’d dropped a pile of bricks on their foot.

“I just…” Ahsoka says, then pauses.

Anakin looks down at her and waits.

“You needed an opening,” she says quietly. “I thought…”

“Look,” Anakin says, and rubs his forehead. “A big part of learning how to be a Jedi - really learning, not just knowing how to swing around a lightsaber - is knowing when to act. You need to figure out who you can help, and… and _if_ you can help. You can’t just go charging in.”

“ _You_ go charging in,” Ahsoka points out. “You went charging in when you fought Ventress.”

“And look how much I messed up. You got hurt!” Anakin argues.

“You could have been hurt worse!” she cries.

Anakin pauses for a moment, then sighs. They’re safe, he reminds himself - Ahsoka will be okay, and the worry and the anger and the hurt drains out of him, leaving him mostly just tired. He can see where she’s coming from - how many times has he heard this kind of speech, sitting in her position?

“It’s something I’ve always struggled with,” he says, and takes a seat beside Ahsoka. “Mom says that I need to know when I can trust people to save themselves - and so do you, Ahsoka.”

“But it’s so hard,” Ahsoka says. “I just… I feel like I can help, so doesn’t not helping make me a bad person?”

“I think that’s the difference between feeling and knowing,” Anakin says. “If you know that you can help - that’s when you go help. But if you feel like you can help, there’s a chance you’ll just make things worse.”

Ahsoka looks down. “When I tried to help against Ventress, and got myself hurt.”

“Like that,” he says softly. “You can’t help others if you can’t help yourself, first.”

“But how do you tell?” she asks, looking up, her eyes wide.

“I don’t know,” he says, though he knows that’s not really a useful answer. “Practice, maybe.”

“It’s important to listen,” Kix says.

Anakin and Ahsoka both look over at him, startled; it looks like he’s finished up with his other patient, and is organizing the shelves.

“What?” he says. “I’m a medic, I’m studying up to maybe be a doctor on top of that. You need to listen to what people are saying, and to what they’re not saying - it’s the difference between a brother saying he’s fine while he’s bleeding out on the ground, or someone worrying over a cut that’ll heal on its own. But also, if someone says they’re hurting, they’re probably hurting, no matter how roundabout they say it, no matter if they say it’s in a different place than it is.”

Anakin nods. “So when I said that I could handle Ventress, you should have trusted me that I could handle Ventress,” he says. “But also, when you backed away, I should have seen that you were going to try to help.”

“I’m going to need to learn my limits,” she says glumly. He can empathize with that; it’s the catchphrase of all the teachers and adult Jedi who try to teach, to _learn your limits_.

But it’s true, he’s learned - learning, really.

“Everyone gets in over their heads sometime,” he says. “But yes. That’s the two key ideas here, is knowing who _needs_ help–” he nods at Kix - “And knowing if _you_ can help.”

He sees Ahsoka pause, think over his words. His emphasis. “So if _I_ can’t help,” she says slowly, “Then… I find someone who can, and I’m helping that way?”

Anakin grins. “Exactly,” he says.

“Good,” Kix says. “Now that we’ve had that vital and hopefully clear discussion, Commander Tano needs to go _lie down_.”

“Initiate,” Ahsoka corrects.

Anakin rolls his eyes. “C’mon, Snips,” he says, and picks her up, ignoring her yelp. “Let’s get you back to your bunk.”


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In the aftermath, Ahsoka learns some interesting lessons.

Skyguy leaves her lying in the bunk she’d woken up in, except now she has to wear a medical headdress that’ll help her brain recover from the concussion. It’s not uncomfortable, really, just annoying - annoying that she has to be in bed while things are still happening, annoying that she can’t do lightsaber work for days, annoying that she has to wear the stupid headdress.

Annoying that she tried to help Knight Skywalker and made things worse.

It’s not like he was ever going to… well. That wasn’t ever really an option, no matter what; new Knights don’t take on padawans except in special circumstances. It would be silly to be hoping for it, she tells herself, so it’s silly to feel disappointed now.

Ahsoka is still a Jedi Initiate, though, and she wants to be the best Jedi she can be, for herself and for the galaxy. She’s heard people say that that means she needs to let go of all of her emotions; Shmi says something similar, but she says that Ahsoka needs to acknowledge her emotions, to understand where they’re coming from, to not let them control her.

So.

Ahsoka sinks down into a light meditation and thinks about her emotions, and why she’s feeling them. She’s upset at herself - angry and guilty because she’d gotten hurt. If she tries to help someone again, and gets hurt again, and just makes things worse, then what’s the point? She’s just a failure of a Jedi - no. No, that’s not what will happen. Ahsoka breaks herself out of the spiral of bad emotions, and tells herself, _next time I’ll do better_. Better with her lightsaber, better with her timing - better knowing if she’ll be needed, if her help will be helpful.

Kix had said she should listen to people, to what they said and to what they didn’t say. What did that mean, though? Listening to what people say, that’s obvious. But how does she listen to something that a person _doesn’t_ say?

There’s a quiet tap on the door.

“Go to sleep,” Knight Skywalker says. “I can hear you thinking from out here. Let yourself rest, and you’ll heal faster, Snips.”

“Okay,” she calls, though she’s not very happy about it. At least it’ll be better than sitting in the darkness thinking in circles, she thinks, and lets herself drift off.

Ahsoka’s dreams are full of strange animals, lizards and large mammals with curling horns. It feels like someone keeps trying to give her something - a gift? - but she keeps shaking her head when it’s offered to her. What is it? A piece of cloth? A long string, tied to a needle, stabbing into the fabric again and again and again… it keeps being held out to her, in human hands. Or not human - yes, human. But they’re that pale brown of human skin, then metallic, then brown, then metallic, and somehow it melds with the cloth until Ahsoka isn’t sure what is the giver and what is the gift.

The next morning is much better - when she wakes up, her head aches, but she feels far less dizzy. Just like the morning before, she wakes up before the second sun has risen, and goes to find Kelin.

“Filling cracks probably doesn’t count as heavy lifting,” Ahsoka offers when she finds the human.

Kelin raises an eyebrow. “It doesn’t, which I know because Kix came to me and said you might try to do more work than you’re ready for,” she says, crossing her arms. “He says that helping fill the cracks should be fine, but let Kas to all the climbing that needs to be done, and take a break if you feel like you need to.”

Ahsoka sighs. “Okay. I can do that.”

Kelin puts a hand on her shoulder. “Healing from injuries is hard, and tedious,” she says. “The more you push your limits, the longer it’ll take to heal.”

“I _know_ ,” Ahsoka says, whining a little more than she’d meant to. She takes a deep breath, trying to let herself be calm. “I know.” She’ll wait to climb, and take breaks, and all that stupid stuff, if it means she can use a lightsaber again sooner.

“Kas is over in the western quarters,” Kelin says, patting Ahsoka’s shoulder once before she moves away to deal with someone else.

The western quarters - where they’d fought Ventress yesterday. The grenade hadn’t destroyed any of the houses, but there are going to be _lots_ of cracks to fill.

Kas is waiting for her, big bucket of wall-fixing goop in their hands; Ahsoka grins when she sees them.

“Are you okay?” they ask, their eyes wide. “I heard you fought _Ventress_.”

Ahsoka winces a bit. “I’ve been better,” she says. “I’m a little concussed - um, my brain got a little bruised, so I’m supposed to let you do the climbing and to take breaks if I get tired.”

Kas nods. “Kelin said,” they say. “She also said that you might not notice if you got tired, so I’m supposed to keep an eye out for that, too.”

“Oh.” Ahsoka grimaces. “I can take care of myself.”

“That doesn’t mean you can’t have help,” Kas points out.

Ahsoka sighs. “Fine. Let’s get started, then.”

They fill the cracks in the houses in relative silence, not talking unless one of them points out a crack; the silence relaxes after a while, though, until they’re chatting as much as they had yesterday.

“Ugh,” Kas says, and wipes the sweat off their forehead, leaving a smear of grey goo behind. “Okay, I don’t know about you, but _I’m_ tired.”

Ahsoka finds herself grinning. “Honestly? Me too. Let’s take that break.”

They leave the goop at the building they’re halfway through fixing and wander back to the mess to grab some water, which Kas insists is necessary for a break. Honestly, at this humidity - or, well, this lack of humidity - Ahsoka’s not going to argue.

Kas perches on the edge of a table while Ahsoka sits in a chair, and Ahsoka finally remembers the question she’d wondered about last night. She has no idea if Kas will have the answer, but it can’t hurt to ask, can it?

“Do you know what it means to listen to the words that someone _isn’t_ saying?” Ahsoka asks.

To her surprise, Kas nods. “Of course,” they say. “That’s super important when you’re listening to your master, so you can tell how to act.”

Ahsoka frowns. “I don’t get it.”

Kas stares at her for a second, then tilts their head to the side. “Huh,” they say. “Okay. So, if someone says that everything is fine, but you look at them and they’re glaring and stomping around, does that mean they’re actually fine?”

“No,” Ahsoka says. “So it means… body language, and that sort of thing?”

“And also listening to what they’re avoiding talking about,” Kas says, nodding. “Like, if you ask someone a question about a few different things, and they only answer part of it, that could mean they don’t want to talk about the parts they didn’t answer. You can tell a _lot_ about people from what they’re not saying.”

Ahsoka blinks. “Huh.” She’d never really thought of it that way before - it’s like listening on two different levels at once.

Kas grins. “You’re good at hearing things, but you also need to learn how to _listen_ , don’t you,” they say. “Do they really not teach you this stuff at your Temple?”

“They don’t,” Ahsoka says. “Though it sounds more like something you need to gain from experience, not just learning in a classroom.” The barest hint of a thought crosses her mind, but when she tries to figure out what it is, it’s long gone. Maybe it’ll be back later; for now, all she can do is sip her water and wait. Ugh.

“Classroom learning is really different from Dad teaching me things. I get what you mean,” Kas says. “Beru and Kelin and Anakin and some of the clones have been teaching us kids in the evenings - which I guess you missed when you hit your head and had to go rest. But maybe you can come see it tonight.”

“I’d love to,” Ahsoka says. “What are you learning?”

Kas explains about all the different things they’re learning - mathematics and physics and a bit about politics, then asks Ahsoka to tell them about classes in the Temple, and that discussion lasts them all the way back to fixing up the western quarters and most of the way through lunch.

Ahsoka’s not sure what she’s supposed to do after lunch, so she tries to make an effort to eat more slowly, make lunch drag on longer. She wishes that she hadn’t gotten this concussion - stupid Ventress.

… That’s what had crossed her mind earlier. “Kas,” Ahsoka says, trying to keep her tone casual. “If you’re… arguing with someone, and there’s something they could taunt you about, but they don’t. Could that be another example of listening to what they’re not saying?”

“Sure,” Kas says through their mouthful of food, then swallows. “That could be something they don’t know about, or something they feel like is going to far - so they could be less angry than you think they are. Or it could be that whatever it is is a sensitive subject for them, too.”

Ahsoka’s lekku feel twitchy - she’s heard it compared to a human’s hairs on the back of their neck rising up. Ventress wouldn’t feel like any subject is going too far. But when Knight Skywalker said that Ventress was the one protecting slavers, she hadn’t retorted, even though something had upset Knight Skywalker about saying that.

_Other than you, everyone here used to be a slave_. Knight Skywalker had looked hesitant after saying that, like there was something else he wanted to say.

Ahsoka watches a small group of clones getting their food, quietly talking among themselves.

_Everyone_.

Like a punch to the gut, Ahsoka gets it. The clones are just as much slaves as Kas had been.

_Everyone_ , she thinks, and it rings true in the Force.

Her thoughts spiral around, and she wonders. Ventress hadn’t taunted Skyguy about that. Did she not know? Or was it possible that she–

“You’re not saying much,” Kas observes.

“Well, what are you hearing from that?” Ahsoka asks.

Kas laughs for a second, then their face grows more solemn. “The clones,” they say. “You just figured that out.”

Ahsoka swallows, feeling almost sick to her gut. “And the Republic is fighting a war. Using–”

“Yeah,” Kas says quietly. “My dad’s talked to a few of them - they say that Beru and Anakin are trying to get them out, they _are_ getting out a lot of the ones who don’t want to fight, pretending they’ve died in battle and having them help groups of us away to safe planets. But the problem’s in the system - they need to fix the Republic to make the clones free.”

There’s a story there, in the words that Kas isn’t saying - Ahsoka can’t imagine ex-slaves hearing about this and not doing anything, not being upset. But Kas picks up their tray to go wash up before Ahsoka can ask anything more, so she stays quiet.

Ahsoka stays in the mess as Kas heads off to help their dad, not sure what to do. About… about _anything_. The Republic is supposed to be the good guys, and… what does it mean that the Jedi are leading the clones, then? What does being a Jedi really _mean_ , in light of… _this_?

 

* * *

 

 

Ahsoka ends up meditating again, for lack of anything better to do; also because… well, she’s had a lot of interesting revelations today.

Peace eludes her, though, probably because all these ideas of hers are really troubling. Normally, now’s when she would go run around, get her blood pumping, maybe go a few rounds with lightsabers - but she can’t, because of her stupid concussion.

Maybe if she goes to talk to Kix, he’ll say she’s rested enough, she thinks. It’s not really likely, not when he’d said three whole days without lightsabers, but it’s something to do other than sit around and worry.

The infirmary is mostly empty when she gets there - Kix is in the back, wrapping a long, thin cut on another clone’s arm.

“And next time, when you’re carrying a load too big for you, _ask for help_ ,” the medic snaps.

The other clone sighs and nods. “Sorry, Kix,” he says. “Hey, you have another visitor.”

Kix glances back at her and sighs. “When I say no lightsabers for three days, I mean _no_ lightsabers for three days,” he says, before she can even open her mouth to ask.

Ahsoka droops a bit. “Okay,” she says.

“You might as well come in so I can check how it’s progressing, though,” he says, turning back to the other clone and tying off the bandage. “Keep that clean,” he warns.

“I’ll try,” the other clone says with a grin as he walks out the door.

Kix shakes his head, then turns to Ahsoka. He runs her through the same tests he had yesterday, having her follow his finger with her eyes, then her montrals, checking the bruising on her lekku, all sorts of things that she can barely keep track of.

“You’re healing pretty well,” Kix says finally. “Good job not exerting yourself.”

“Thanks,” she says, and grins. Her grin fades as Kix turns and starts typing into his datapad. Aside from the question she’d wanted to ask, something feels weird about the infirmary. It had been there yesterday, too, she realizes - she just hadn’t noticed it then. Whatever it is is emanating from a small room off to the side of the main infirmary.

Kix must notice her frowning at the doorway, because he makes sure to stand directly between her and it.

“I’m not going to go look,” she protests. “But… what _is_ it? It feels…” she doesn’t know quite how to describe it. There’s a person there, but also _not_.

Kix grimaces. “Did General Skywalker tell you what we found in Jabba’s palace?” he asks.

“No,” Ahsoka admits.

“I should _not_ be the one explaining this,” Kix mutters to himself. “All right. So when a being is in stasis - cryostasis, carbon freeze, any type - they’re not awake, of course. Not thinking at all. But they’re not dead, either, and you Jedi can… sense that, I guess. General Skywalker said it sounded almost like an echo of a person.”

Ahsoka can understand describing it like that, though it doesn’t feel quite right - like a dream, maybe, but that’s also not right. “So Jabba had people in stasis stored away in his palace,” she says quietly.

“We don’t know who they are,” Kix says. “Or why they were frozen. But some of them have injuries that need to be treated, ones that could kill them if they were unfrozen; probably they were put in stasis as leverage. We need to wait ’til we’re off planet at a real medical facility to free them.”

Ahsoka shudders. Stasis feels creepy enough by itself, but being in stasis, being injured, being trapped there… that sounds _horrible._

But then she remembers why she’d come here in the first place.

“Are you…” she trails off. She has no clue how to ask this question, no clue where to even start.

Kix looks up. “Hm?”

“Nothing,” she says.

He just raises an eyebrow, as if to say _there’s no way in hell that’s going to fool me_.

Ahsoka bites her lip. “You… you guys don’t really… have a choice, being here.”

“Oh,” Kix says. “That. We don’t, no.”

“But that’s _wrong_ ,” Ahsoka says. “And Knight Skywalker, he’s trying to get rid of all the slavers but…” she doesn’t know how to put it into words, really, or maybe she doesn’t want to.

Kix nods slowly, understanding what she’s trying and failing to say. “The thing is, General Skywalker isn’t the one in charge,” he says.

Ahsoka blinks. “But he’s the _General_ ,” she says.

Kix shrugs. “You want me to use the nice, friendly words, or you want me to tell it like it is?”

“Which does Skyguy get?” she asks, curious.

“General Skywalker gets the nice, friendly words,” Kix says flatly. “Most Jedi get the nice, friendly words, but for whatever reason, Sarad said that you could handle hearing it like it really is.”

Ahsoka pauses. _Sarad_ had said that? She’s hardly interacted with the mandalorian. Tatooinian. Whatever she thinks of herself as. The point being - Ahsoka’s seen how close she is to Knight Skywalker. If Sarad is willing to keep the truth from him, from most Jedi, but tell her? Ahsoka really only has one choice here.

“Tell it like it is,” she says.

Kix nods, sliding away his datapad and standing, moving around, starting to clean up.

Ahsoka gets it; it’s easier to talk when you’re moving. Some people find it easier to talk when they don’t have to look at people, too.

Especially when the topics are hard.

“The way we see it, the Jedi are just as much slaves as we are, in a way,” Kix says finally. “They can decide where to fight, and how to fight - but they can’t decide _not_ to fight, they can’t say that they’re staying out of this war.”

“There are dozens of types of slavery, obvious or hidden,” Ahsoka says quietly, to herself. Knight Skywalker had said that, too, when he’d talked about everyone having been a slave.

“Exactly,” Kix says. “Sarad… she was our teacher, because she was being blackmailed. Her family, all her community, were stuck on Kamino. They’re safe now, somewhere in the galaxy.”

Ahsoka’s brow furrows. “So she’s not being blackmailed any more? Except she’s still…” Still here, still fighting in the war.

“She likes to say she’s just looking out for us all,” Kix says, and sighs. “And there’s the risk that the Sith will track down her family, wherever they’re hidden. The risk that they’ll go after Boba, after General Skywalker, just to get at her… so she’s stuck here, with all of her vod’ike, fighting in this war.”

Ahsoka doesn’t know Mandalorian, but she’s thinking she may want to learn, soon.

“Even more than her, the Jedi don’t have a choice about whether to fight,” Kix says. “If they go over to the Seppies, they’ll probably be turned over to Vulsion, or just forced to fight on the other side of the war. If they refuse to fight, they’ll be condemned by the Senate.”

“If they leave the Order, they’ll be leaving their family,” Ahsoka says. “But that’s… that’s not really a trap, it’s not direct blackmail.” She pauses. “… Is it?”

Kix shrugs. “Sarad says they might have to be worry about imprisonment, too. Because, of course,” he says, his tone turning sarcastic, “What Jedi would abandon the Republic in its time of need but one planning on going over to the enemy?”

Ahsoka stares at him, horrified. She doesn’t want to believe that, but… “… They’d really say that, wouldn’t they?”

Kix nods. “You get the picture? Not all of us clones know this, by they way,” he says. “Some of us don’t think about it that deeply, and we don’t really talk about it, not openly. General Skywalker doesn’t look at it that way. Sarad says it’s because it would hurt him too much.”

Oh, Ahsoka can see that. She can see it clear as day, the way he’d react. That would _not_ be good.

“There are bad generals, of course,” Kix continues. “You’ve heard about Krell, probably - he went above and beyond _bad_. Just because the Jedi are stuck like us doesn’t mean they’re always good about it. But General Skywalker listens to us, makes sure that Rex is okay with the legion going where it goes. It’s horrible, but better to fight on Tatooine and free people than to protect coreworld politicians who have nothing real to lose.”

Ahsoka nods. “Do you know if there’s anything I can do to help? I’ve been running messages all across the galaxy, and I’m–” she stops.

She’s not really a real Jedi yet. Or maybe she is - she’s been going back and forth on that one a lot lately. But now being a Jedi means something different.

“I think I have to go meditate on this,” she says, and leaves before Kix can say anything else.

It’s only a little bit of a lie - she does have to meditate on it, yes, so much meditation. But she feels too wired, too anxious to sit right now, and she needs to release those anxieties into the Force. She _can_ release those anxieties into the Force. Maybe. It wouldn’t be a problem to trace the source of that worry, she knows exactly where it’s coming from. Ahsoka just doesn’t know if she’s ready to let go of it yet.

There are lots of different places she could go, people she could go to for help, but she doesn’t want to go to any of them. Her feet take her around the city, under the afternoon suns, over the sand and rock.

Could she leave? Say goodbye to the Jedi Order, to her lightsaber, to her friends? To Barriss?

Does she _want_ to?

That’s the billion-credit question.

Ahsoka wanders around the city, letting her thoughts flow through her head, and can’t find an answer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Vod'ike = little siblings, plural.
> 
> Finals are terrifying and awful and mostly just suck all around, so I may not have time to reply to comments on wednesday or friday or monday; however, this is all written in advance, so chapters will still be going up (barring some disaster, like getting feedback on a paper or figuring out the thing I've been trying to research for like half a week with no success).


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Two steps forward, two steps back - though that doesn't mean that Anakin's getting nowhere.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is a little longer than the others, which really bugs me, but this is the only way the scene distribution made sense, so whatever. Ugh.

 

Planning a trap that a Hutt will buy into is no easy thing.

Anakin knows full well how skeptical Hutts are - it comes with being crime lords, probably; they can’t trust even their own family to not sell them out, so they make it a habit to not trust anyone.

In this case, though, that could be a benefit.

“So, then,” Beru says, leaning over the holotable in their makeshift war room. “What’s something that Gardulla wants badly enough to betray the Seppies for?”

Shani, one of the 501st’s lieutenants, leans forward. “Glory,” the clone suggests. “Money?”

“Power,” says Appo, another lieutenant.

“Good starts, but we need to be more specific,” Rex says.

“So what are the things that’ll bring her money and glory?” Hardcase muses, tossing a pebble up and down in his hands. Anakin doesn’t even know where he found the pebble.

“She wants more slaves, but she wouldn’t mind getting droid help capturing them,” Anakin says, grimacing. “She wants more of _anything_ , really - what if we look at it the other way around? What’s something she doesn’t want the Seppies getting more of?” That’s one of Obi-Wan’s tricks - reframing the situation. Or maybe it is one of his mother’s? They both use it so much that Anakin has no clue which one learned it from the other.

“She wouldn’t mind the Seppies having more forces here,” Hardcase says. “Not if they’re helping her out.”

“But she wouldn’t want too many, either,” Appo points out. “Not if she’s worried they’re gonna overthrow her.”

“If she’s worried they’re going to overthrow her…” Beru frowns, tilting her head to the side, thinking. “She’s going to want some power over them. She’s going to want that ace in her hand. What if she knew we had some way of destroying all the droids at once?”

“But we don’t,” Appo points out.

Anakin grins. “But she doesn’t know that,” he says, the plan starting to come together in his mind. “So we leak some transmissions saying that we’re ready for the delivery of a new experimental weapon against droids. She won’t want the Seppies getting their hands on that.”

“We need to plan for her sending the maximum number of troops she can,” Rex says, bringing up the region’s map on the holotable. “If we say we’re receiving the shipment here, at this outcropping, we’ve got the high ground _and_ enough place to hide a reasonably-sized force.”

“Looks good,” Anakin says. “It’s a good place for a shipment to arrive, too - far enough away from a settlement that nobody will notice, but close enough to transport.”

They run through the plan a few times, going over what could go right and what could go wrong, and doing their best to plan around the worst-case scenarios. The Bando Gora showing up are definitely a worst-case scenario - but so far, they haven’t seen any of the drug gang on Tatooine. It bothers Beru, Anakin knows; she’s definitely ranted about it enough, talking about what a clear advantage it was, and how easily it could be taken away from them. Anakin, though, is just relieved that they don’t have to worry about getting drugged again.

Part way through the planning session, he catches Beru’s eye.

She raises her eyebrow at him, asking _what_?

Anakin glances pointedly up at the ceiling.

Beru shrugs, as if to say, _what can you do_?

Rex waves his hand in the middle of their silent conversation, then slowly and carefully signs in the GAR sign language that Anakin’s still learning. _Eavesdropper? Twin-red-blades again_?

Twin-red-blades - oh, Ventress.

_No,_ Beru signs back fluently. _Eavesdropper, but ally_.

Rex sighs.

“I’m sorry for eavesdropping,” Ahsoka says, peering in through a window, upside down.

“How–” Anakin shakes his head. “We weren’t talking!”

“Montrals,” she reminds him.

Right. He always forgets that montrals give togruta a weird combination of hearing, echolocation, and proprioception. Of course she’d be able to feel them signing. Though for her to understand it…

“I didn’t know you knew GAR sign,” Rex says, raising an eyebrow. “Where’d you pick that up?”

“I’m a _messenger_ ,” she says, rolling her eyes. “I’ve been all around the galaxy these past few weeks. I picked up the basics in case I needed to say something but be quiet.”

“Why don’t you come inside,” Anakin suggests.

Ahsoka hesitates. “I… sure,” she says finally, and disappears from the window.

Anakin can’t help but notice how quiet Ahsoka’s been since she got hurt. She laughs and smiles, chatting with Kas, but he can always feel an undercurrent of… something, some dark emotion, just under her skin. Even when Kix says she can use her lightsaber again tomorrow - something’s made her hesitate.

He’s only known Ahsoka a few days, but even he can tell that she’s not the type of person to hesitate over taking her lightsaber, not with the kind of enthusiasm she’d shown when they trained together, that first day.

Before he has a chance to worry too much, though, she’s entering through the door, making her way over to the holotable.

“What’s the thing going to look like?” is her first question.

“What thing?” Anakin asks.

“The thing that Gardulla is going to think you have,” she says patiently. “The secret weapon. She’s going to expect her guards to come back with it, right?”

Beru sighs. “So we need something to show her,” she says. “Anakin, do you think you can whip something reasonable-looking up?”

He’s already running through designs in his head, trying to come up with something dangerous-looking but harmless. Maybe he’ll make it glow, that should look impressive enough. “Definitely,” he says. “When are we going to pull this off?”

It’s weighing on them all - they have four days left to defeat Gardulla.

“We can be ready by tomorrow afternoon,” Rex says after a moment.

“That means we need to start leaking transmissions to Gardulla _now_ ,” Anakin says. “Hardcase - you’re good at lying, right?”

“No,” Hardcase deadpans.

Anakin rolls his eyes. “Work with Appo and Wire, see what you can come up with,” he says. “Run it by Beru first to make sure it’ll sound like what Gardulla’s expecting. Rex, start putting together the strike team, and go over what’ll need to be happening with the rest of the army while we’re sneaking around.”

“Yes, sir,” they all say, and salute.

“Can I come?” Ahsoka asks.

Anakin looks at her for a long moment - but she’s not asking this because she wants to fight, and honestly that’s what worries him a little. She looks solemn, thoughtful. “Give me your reasons,” he says.

“Not all of her guards are going to be humans,” Ahsoka says promptly - she’s been thinking of arguments. Good for her. “I can pass as a smaller species, or as an older togruta, with the right disguise. Plus, you’re going to want as many Force-users as possible inside the actual palace; I can help.”

He doesn’t want her in danger. He doesn’t want her anywhere _near_ Gardulla’s palace. But she’s right.

“If there aren’t any guards that you can disguise yourself as, we won’t be able to sneak you in,” he warns her. “But if you can disguise as a guard… then yes, you can come.”

She grins, brightly, though not as brightly as he’s seen her smile before. “Thank you!” she says, and darts off, probably to go talk to Rex.

Anakin becomes aware of Beru standing behind him, watching him. Not saying anything - waiting for him to start talking.

“I’m worried about Ahsoka,” he finally admits to Beru.

Beru nods. “Everyone’s been able to see that, Ani.”

Anakin blinks. “Everyone’s been able to see that she’s acting strange?”

“Everyone’s been able to see that you’re worried about her,” Beru says, a tiny wicked grin on her face.

Anakin shoves Beru, and she shoves him right back, and it’s just like when they were kids, too much sand and everything.

“Part of me wants to call Mom,” he says after a few moments. “But I’m supposed to be a knight now - I’m supposed to be able to handle things by myself.”

“Just because you’re a knight doesn’t mean you can’t ask for help,” Beru points out. “Wasn’t that the whole point of coming here with the 501st?”

Anakin shrugs. She is right, of course - Beru’s right most of the time. But this thing with Ahsoka feels… different. It’s not like asking for help with military strategy, or lightsaber katas, or even meditation. He doesn’t say that, though. “I mean, we can’t risk Gardulla intercepting the transmission either way,” he says.

“I suppose not,” Beru says. “You could always talk to my mom, though.”

That’s… definitely an option. Except not really. “I feel like this is a Jedi thing,” he says.

Beru looks like she’s debating something internally, crossing her arms and staring out at the landscape.

“Do you want her to be your padawan?” she asks finally.

“What?” Anakin says, laughing. “Me, with a padawan? That’s… that’s ridiculous…” It’s not like he’s helping her with her lightsaber skills, or giving her topics for meditation, or teaching her bits of strategy. It’s not like he’s proud of how much she wants to help, or looking out for her, or worrying about how she’s doing.

Oh, no.

“I’m not _ready_ for a padawan,” he says, and he can tell that the sharp sense of panic he feels is leaking through into his voice. “I’m just barely _knighted_ , I don’t know how to teach! I - I still have so much to learn!”

“You know what your mom would say,” Beru says, her voice sing-song, teasing him.

Anakin glares at her, because yes, he does. Mom would say that it’s not about being _ready_ to teach, it’s about having the opportunity to teach; she would say that everyone is still learning, and padawans are supposed to teach their masters as much as the masters teach the padawan.

“We’ll see how she does in Gardulla’s palace,” he says. “I’ll… think about it.”

He’s _definitely_ going to have to think about this.

 

* * *

 

 

The first chance he gets to really calm down and think, though, is the next morning, in the pre-dawn light. Anakin dreamed of Kitster last night - looking as he had at Storm’s Eye, the same yet different from the boy he’d been when Anakin and his mother had left. He dreamed of Kitster trying to reach out to him, take his hand, but Kitster wasn’t strong enough. So Anakin had reached out, had taken Kitster’s hand, and Kitster had whispered, _“Ani, careful_ –”

This is also the first chance he’s gotten to work on their decoy weapon, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing; having something in his hands has always helped him think.

He sits outside the house he’s been sleeping in, on the sandy clay steps leading down from the house directly above it, and tinkers.

It’s like a memory, almost, but real - sitting here on Tatooine, working on fixing some broken machine. He half-expects to hear Watto calling for him, to hear Kitster yawn and ask him if he _really_ needs to be up this early.

But Watto is gone, sucked into the Bando Gora’s deathstick trade and dead of either the drugs or the drug war. Kitster is trapped, a slave again in Gardulla’s palace, after all the work he’d done on the freedom trail.

Something in that thought gives Anakin pause, and he lets his thoughts play out as he teases a bit of wire into the right curve.

Storm’s Eye was betrayed, probably by someone truth-drugged or tortured. The Bando Gora found out, and they told the Hutts, who told Vulsion - or maybe the Bando Gora told Vulsion, and then the Hutts?

Both gangs, Hutts and Bando Gora, have a lot to gain from working with the Sith, but the Bando Gora have to have been supplying Vulsion for longer, for her to have all the poisons and drugs she does. She had that dart that poisoned Obi-Wan, she knew what to use to block Anakin off from the Force.

Maybe even more tellingly, the Force-damping knockout gas hadn’t bothered her in the slightest. She knows how to safeguard against it, either filtering it through her mask or using the Force to take it directly out of her bloodstream; either method would take extensive knowledge of the gas itself to pull off. Air filters are tricky, and Anakin has no doubt that the Force-damping knockout gas has been designed to cut straight through most of them.

There’s a chance - small, but there - that the Bando Gora could lead them to Vulsion. Anakin knows that there’s some records of them in the Jedi Archives; the Jedi Order has tangled with the Bando Gora before, and hasn’t come out on top. He doesn’t know the specifics, but he knows that Jedi have died, some of them close friends of his friends; maybe Obi-Wan will know more about them, and Anakin makes a mental note to ask him.

The wire, in its proper curve, slots into the machine, and Anakin feels a low buzz of electricity flow through it. He flips the device over in his hands, feeling its weight, its balance. Something is off on the left side, and he pokes and prods at it, trying to find the imbalance.

It’s hard to articulate, what he loves about mechanics; part of it is that he knows so much, so thoroughly, that he’s just confident about what to do with any machine he finds. But there’s another part, something that just feels _nice_ , having a piece of metal to turn over and over in his hands, a piece of wire to bend into shape, a power cell to attach into just the right part. He runs his fingers over the device, with his hands and with the Force, feeling how it fits together just right. It feels… it feels like how he feels with Padmé.

Anakin’s not sure where that thought came from, but it’s true. Her vision, her hope, her argumentativeness; the way her eyes crinkle when she smiles, how she carries herself with certainty, with determination, how she acts how she thinks is best and refuses to regret the outcomes of her actions. How she can still admit she’s wrong, when she thinks she’s wrong; how she makes herself look beautiful for her traditions and so that people will pay attention to her, and how she’s just as beautiful in plain clothing with her hair in a simple braid, because she’s _Padmé_.

He feels… bright, warm, _happy_ inside when he’s around her. He’s happy other times, of course, but it feels different with her, like there’s nothing he’d rather do that sit with her, curled up on a couch, his fingers playing through her hair, a soft smile on her face.

Anakin forcibly drags himself away from thoughts of Padmé, because he’s just sitting on the steps, a probably-goofy smile on his face, and if Beru catches him like this she’ll never let him hear the end of it.

He has something else to think about, he reminds himself.

Ahsoka.

Anakin knows that she’s figured out what he didn’t say, about the clones being slaves. And for all she knows - for all most of the Republic knows - it’s the Jedi who ordered the creation of the clone army. She’s probably questioning that. The reality of slavery - Kas, younger than her, being a former slave - has hit her hard; reconciling that with the Jedi’s use of the clone army has to be hard.

He knows it’s been hard for him.

What makes it better - the only thing that _can_ make it better - is that they’re trying to fix it. Padmé is working through the legislation, trying to find a way to free the clones. He and his mother are helping clones go AWOL where they can; just a few days ago, he and Beru had sent Jee and Makeshift off with a group of tatooinians headed for Ator. He doesn’t know what Obi-Wan is doing, doesn’t know how much Obi-Wan has figured out, but he knows Obi-Wan, and he knows that Obi-Wan will go to his mother for answers sooner or later. How he’ll react… that’s a different issue. Obi-Wan has listened to Shmi over the years just as much as Anakin has; he knows how wrong slavery is. Will he react the way Ahsoka’s reacting now, doubting his place, the Jedi’s place?

This war has gone on for barely two months, and that’s already two months too long, in Anakin’s opinion. It’s tearing them apart, in body, in heart, in mind. He can feel his anger, writhing just beneath the surface of his skin - his anger at the Senate’s blindness, at the clones’ situation. Anger at the pain this war will force Obi-Wan to face, the pain this war _has_ forced Obi-Wan to face. And not just Obi-Wan - his mother. Dooku. Siri. Yoda. Beru. Ahsoka.

Anakin can’t just let this anger go, because it’s not _wrong_. All the pain in the galaxy - this shouldn’t be happening, but it is, and it makes him furious. He knows he needs to let that go. He knows that the best way to right all the wrongs is to work towards the truth, do all they can as Jedi, but he _can’t_. His anger isn’t like his mother’s, isn’t like Obi-Wan’s; he can’t let it melt away, sink to the bottom of the water and not disturb the surface, like that metaphor so many years ago. It burns, inside him, growing and growing.

Fire, he knows, consumes just as much as it warms; he hasn’t learned _nothing_ from the Jedi, all these years.

In his hands, the false weapon is complete; it looks like a combination between a detonator and a signal relay, a triangular hexagon, switches and buttons galore lining its sides. The center glows, dimly, a color somewhere between blue and violet.

It is completely, utterly useless. It barely even powers itself.

And yet, it’s their ticket inside Gardulla’s palace - their ticket to victory. To freedom, for Kitster, for the rest of Tatooine, for all the others they can help.

The second sun has risen by now, and most of the city is awake, starting the day’s work; Anakin stands, brushing the sand off his pants, and heads towards the war room. He pauses before he enters, hearing the faint sounds of blaster-fire. Not in a rhythm that sounds like a battle; someone is practicing.

Around the back of the building, he sees Ahsoka, Beru, and Rex. There’s a makeshift target a few meters away from the group, with scorch-marks scattered both on it and on the sand around it.

“Remember,” Beru is saying. “You need to stay steady, but not too stiff.”

Ahsoka squeezes the trigger; a scorch mark appears on the target, though not really near the center.

“It’s a good start,” Rex says encouragingly. “You’re much better than you were before.”

“But still not as good as a five-year-old clone?” Ahsoka says, and sighs.

Rex shrugs. “Nope.”

“Here,” Anakin says, and Ahsoka jumps in almost guilty surprise.

“Knight Skywalker,” she says.

Anakin grimaces a bit - he’d thought they’d gotten over that - but doesn’t mention it, walking over to the group. “There’s a sort of a flow to it,” he says, correcting her stance a bit; a shift of her foot a bit to the left, her arms a touch more bent. “In the Force, you feel the trajectory of the blaster and your own stance. Breathe, in and out, and feel how you’re balanced. You want to be solid, on the ground; not unyielding, but unmoving.”

Ahsoka closes her eyes and breathes, listening to his words, and shifts her stance the tiniest bit.

In the background, Beru raises her eyebrows at him and grins; he glares back for a second, then ignores her. Just because he enjoys teaching Ahsoka doesn’t mean… whatever.

“Line up your shot, and fire,” he says.

She hits dead center.

“That’s not going to be fast enough in a real battle,” Rex says.

Anakin glares at him. “No, but it’s a start,” he retorts. “That was perfect, Snips.”

“It was?” She opens her eyes and sees where she’d hit. “It was! I… thank you, Knight Skywalker.”

“You’re a fast learner,” he says, and tries to ignore how that makes him feel so, so proud of her. “Has Kix cleared you for lightsaber work?”

Ahsoka nods, less enthusiastic about that than he’d hoped she’d be. A lightsaber is the weapon of a Jedi, after all, and if she’s having doubts…

“Good,” he says. “Let’s get in some practice this morning. Are we still a go for a late afternoon trap?”

Rex nods, sharply.

Anakin takes a deep breath. “Let’s get ready, then,” he says. This is not going to be easy to pull off.

 

* * *

 

 

When the plan goes wrong, it’s in such an unexpected direction that he barely has time to process it.

There are ten of them disguised as guards - Anakin, Beru, and Ahsoka, along with Kix, Jesse, Lefter, Seal, Jak, Shani, and Phel. Anakin can tell that neither Beru nor the clones are happy about having to take off their armor, but it’s necessary and they all know it.

He’s not very happy about putting on the guard’s uniform himself; he’s not psychometric, not like Master Quinlan, but even he can tell that this uniform has seen some awful things.

Compared to that, getting into Gardulla’s palace is easy; they walk up to the front gate, and Anakin grunts out in Huttese that they’ve brought the device. After a few moments, the gate creaks open, and they enter.

Its closing thud, loud behind them, sends chills up his spine; the armor seems to press in on him, the palace close around him. But that’s _not_ actually happening; he can’t afford this kind of reaction, not here. He needs to be focused.

Someone’s hand grabs his, and he almost jumps, before he sees it’s Beru.

She meets his eyes; she’s just as scared as he is, her eyes wide and her lips tight from what he can see behind her helmet. That’s comforting somehow, to know that he’s not the only one on the verge of a panic attack from walking into a Hutt’s palace.

Anakin squeezes her hand, and she squeezes his back; then they walk forwards, dead set on completing their mission.

A being appears before them, a slimy-looking human too pale from a life underground. This is Gardulla’s majordomo, Hez Reshkez.

“The weapon,” he snaps at them.

Anakin holds it out; it really does look like a mysterious device.

Reshkez snatches it from him. “Dismissed,” he barks. “Speak of this to no one, or face the consequences.” He scuttles off before they can figure out whether they’re supposed to salute or bow or say anything, solving that problem for them.

“We split up here,” Beru says quietly, once nobody else is within earshot. “Ahsoka, Kix, Jesse, go pretend to patrol the slave dormitories. Do what you can for them, break what locks you can, but be subtle; let them know that help is coming.”

“Shani, Jak, Phel, Seal, you go find the droid stations and sabotage them,” Anakin says. “Guard’s halls, too, if you can find them.”

“Lefter, the three of us are going to go sabotage Gardulla’s defenses,” Beru finishes.

Lefter grins. “Ah. I was wondering what I’d been singled out for.”

“Nobody knows how to slice through security like you,” Jesse says, nudging his brother.

Anakin glances down at Ahsoka; she seems just as determined as Jesse and Kix.

She sees him looking, of course, and meets his eyes. “I’ll be all right,” she says, her voice muffled by the guard’s helmet she’d squeezed over her montrals. “Relax, Skyguy.”

“Stay with Jesse and Kix,” he orders her, and she rolls her eyes but nods. “May the Force be with you.” He looks up at their little group. “May the Force be with you all.”

“ _At parjai, at mevyc_ ,” Beru says. _To victory, to freedom_.

“ _Nu’moruta rohak_ ,” they reply, as one. _We do not welcome defeat_.

“Force be with you,” Ahsoka murmurs quietly, then hesitates.

“C’mon, kid,” Jesse says. “Let’s go do some good.”

That, at least, makes Ahsoka grin.

They split, then, and soon it’s just Anakin and Lefter and Beru, wandering through Gardulla’s palace.

Anakin still feels like the palace is pressing down on him, more the deeper they go into it; but the security controls will be as close to the palace’s center as they can be, so they have to keep going in and in, down and down.

It’s when they reach a junction that he realizes what it is he’s actually feeling; the group comes to the split in the tunnels and Anakin automatically turns left.

“Looks like this cluster of wires is leading to the right,” Lefter says quietly, tracing along a patch of exposed wire in the wall. “These are the kind of cables you’d want for security transmissions, too.”

“But…” Anakin shakes his head. That doesn’t make sense. There’s something to the left - he can _feel_ something to the left.

Beru glances down both corridors. “Ani? What is it?”

She really _is_ worried, to call him Ani. Just like–

_Ani, careful–_

“Kitster,” he whispers. “That’s–” _That’s_ what he can feel. Who he can feel. Muted somehow, distant but present, just down that corridor.

“It’s a trap,” Beru whispers. “Oh, sands, that is such a clear trap, you _idiot_ –”

“Take care of the security,” he says. “I’ll meet up with Ahsoka, Jesse, and Kix if I can, or with you on your way out–”

“Anakin Skywalker, listen to me, that is a _trap_ –”

“I _know_ ,” he almost yells, and Beru stops.

He’s shaking. It takes a deep breath - a few deep breaths - and then he can speak again. “I know,” he says. “But I can’t - Beru, he’s here, he’s caught, because of _me_.”

“Because of _us_ ,” she says, her voice tight.

Anakin shakes his head. “You brought us to Storm’s Eye, but they attacked because of me. Get the security down; none of us will be safe without that. I’ll get Kitster.” He turns, ready to walk away before she can retort again, but she reaches out and grabs him. “Beru–”

“Here,” she says, and passes him a thermal detonator. “They won’t be expecting that. Come back safely, Ani, or your mother will never let me hear the end of it.”

“I will,” he promises, and turns and _runs_.

The corridor twists and turns and blurs around him as he runs, his heart beating, pounding. He can feel Kitster, feel the brother he’s barely seen in over a decade, feel the boy he left behind. Anakin had dreamed about Kitster last night - is this what that dream had meant? That he would get a chance to find him, a chance to save him?

A door blocks off the end of the corridor.

Anakin skids to a halt in front of it and stares up at it. It’s dark metal, engraved with a face that’s snarling, or maybe a face that’s screaming. He gets the sinking feeling, with the anger/fear/pain/hate that’s emanating from the door, that yes, this was a trap. It’s a trap for him.

With the Force, he pushes the door open, then walks through.

Gardulla the Hutt waits for him on the other side.

Behind her, frozen in carbonite, is Kitster.

In between him and them is a deep, sunken pit.

“ _Anakin Skywalker_ ,” Gardulla rumbles, the Huttese syllables booming through the room. “ _It has been far too long since you’ve stood in my magnificent presence_.”

“ _Or not long enough_ ,” he retorts in the same language. “ _Surrender, or face the consequences_.”

Gardulla chuckles. “ _The same could be said to you_ ,” she says, and signals a protocol droid, one covered in shiny gold plating.

Anakin can’t feel glad at seeing Threepio here, because the droid has a restraining bolt on him, bowing to Gardulla and walking over to Kitster - to the panel at the side of his carbonite shell.

“ _It would be easy enough to end his life support_ ,” Gardulla says. “ _And not a major loss to profits - too much of a troublemaker, this one._ ”

He feels his hands clench around his lightsaber. “Let him go,” Anakin demands, in Basic.

“ _Jedi are not supposed to have attachments_ ,” Gardulla says. “ _You haven’t been doing well as one, have you, boy? No._ ”

Anakin switches on his lightsaber, extending it in front of him. “Let him go or face the consequences.”

Gardulla clasps her hands in front of her. “ _A compromise_ ,” she says, and gestures down into the pit between them. “ _Take his place, and your friends shall be spared_.”

He stares wordlessly down at the pit in front of him - a carbonite freezing pit. A ridiculous expense, here on Tatooine, but now they know where all of Jabba’s ‘prizes’ had come from. She wants him to sacrifice himself to save his friends. Gardulla is a gambler, but will she keep her word? It’s tempting - the chance to make sure everyone’s safe. But Gardulla is a gambler, and Gardulla knows when to cheat. If he walks into that pit, there’s no guarantee that any of his friends will make it out of here alive or free.

Gardulla knows when to cheat, he thinks, and realizes half a second too late that the time for her to cheat isn’t if he walks into the pit freely - it’s _now_.

Electricity goes surging through his body - the floor was electrified, how had he not _noticed_ that. He probably screams, but he can’t tell through the pain of being electrocuted. Gardulla’s smugness curls through the Force as he lies on the floor, trying to get his shrieking muscles to cooperate, but he can’t.

Somebody grabs his arms and drags him forwards, into the pit - no, no, _no_ –

The last thing Anakin is aware of is pain of a completely different kind; then everything goes numb.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A brief note on Mando'a:  
>  _Nu’moruta rohak_ literally means "not-welcome defeat," which is how Anakin thinks of it; however, a more accurate way of parsing it would probably be "we turn away defeat," where "turning away" is the opposite of "welcome." A similar phrase would be _Moruta ne'rohak_ , "Welcome not-defeat," or "we welcome victory."  
> Mando'a is fun, and figuring out all the details of negation is a fun exercise :D
> 
> Thank you all so much for wishing me luck on my finals - I'll try to reply to comments on friday, if I have time. (hahaha I have no time)


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ahsoka, under the weight of Gardulla's palace.

 

Ahsoka shivers, even with how warm it is in the palace. “This feels… gross,” she mutters. “Everything’s so unhappy. Scared. It’s… sticky.” The corridors wind through the rock under Gardulla’s palace, only lit every few meters, so they’re travelling half the time in darkness and can never see more than a little bit ahead of them. Well, the humans can’t.

“Yeah, I think we’re all gonna be glad to see the last of this place,” Jesse says. “Any idea where the slave’s quarters are?”

Ahsoka shakes her head. “Too far away for me to feel with my montrals,” she says. “And everything here feels the same with the Force. Gross, like I said.”

Jesse shrugs. “We’ll just have to find them the old fashioned way, then,” he says.

“What’s that?” Ahsoka asks.

“We ask,” he says, looking pleased with himself.

Ahsoka and Kix both stare at him.

“I don’t even want to know what you mean by that,” Kix says flatly.

“Ask… the Force?” Ahsoka guesses.

Jesse rolls his eyes. “Just… stay here for a minute.”

“Oh, no,” Kix says. “I’m not leaving you to go get yourself killed.”

“Then follow my lead, and don’t say anything,” Jesse says, and beckons them forwards.

He leads them back where they’d come, into one of the more-used tunnels; slaves, guards, and Gardulla’s guests alike wander by, some scuttling past in the shadows, some striding through the center with their heads held high. There are far more of the former than the latter. Here, only the most vicious have enough courage to strut.

Ahsoka spots the group at the same moment Jesse does; Jesse may know what he’s looking for, but the Force is telling her to sit up and pay attention.

Three guards - three ‘other’ guards - are dragging along a duros. The duros is cooperating, but also looks like they want to punch the guards.

“Perfect,” Jesse says, and heads over.

One of the other guards growls something in Huttese; Jesse snaps back in the same language.

Ahsoka doesn’t understand a word of it, so she takes a moment to examine the duros. They’re probably around Master Kenobi’s age, and their clothing is worn, but it's clearly of the type that spacers wear - they haven’t been on Tatooine for very long, as far as she can tell.

The duros notices her watching, and bares their teeth for a split second; then they look at her again, eyes narrowing. After a second, Ahsoka realizes that she doesn’t exactly look like a typical guard, and looks away; hopefully the duros won’t say anything, and hopefully the _actual_ guards won’t notice.

Jesse grins, though, and the other guards grumble for a few moments - then walk away, leaving the duros in their hands.

So _that_ ’s Jesse’s plan - find someone who would know where the slave quarters are, someone who’s going to want to help them. That’s pretty brilliant, Ahsoka thinks as he leads them back to the quieter passages.

“Who are you?” The duros asks when they get away from the main corridor. “You’re not Gardulla’s guards, not with a togruta kid around.”

“I’m not a _kid_ ,” Ahsoka protests indignantly.

“If you can feel more than a few meters with your montrals, I’ll eat my hat,” the duros says flatly. “Or I would if I had a hat. Besides, you don’t speak a word of Huttese. So. Who _are_ you?”

“We’re here to help,” Jesse says, and takes his helmet off. “I’m Jesse; this is Kix. We’re soldiers in the Grand Army of the Republic, and we’re here to help take Gardulla down.”

The duros raises their eyebrows - or, well, they would if they had eyebrows. “And the kid?”

“My name’s Ahsoka,” she says. “I’m also here to help.” She’s… not quite ready to say she’s a Jedi. Maybe she is. Maybe she isn’t. But there are more important things to focus on right now. “Who are you?”

The duros looks between the three of them and sighs. “I'm Aza. What do you need my help with?”

“Finding the slave quarters,” Jesse says. “We’re going to break out as many as we can, and let them know that the whole army’s coming, soon.”

Aza nods. “That I’ll do, and gladly.” They glance down at Ahsoka one more time, and shake their head.

“Do you have a problem with me?” Ahsoka finally demands.

“No,” Aza says, and sighs. “Gardulla took my entire crew a month or so ago, for a smuggling job that went downhill. My pilot, Xuka, she looks like you.”

“Oh,” Ahsoka says quietly, and keeps walking. That… that hadn’t been the answer she was expecting.

“We’ve been flying together for years,” Aza says softly, almost wistfully. “We’ve had different mechanics, gunners, guards - even a ship’s cook one time, that was an adventure - but Xuka’s been on my crew for over a decade.”

“We’ll get them out,” Ahsoka says quietly, fiercely, and Aza turns to face her, looking skeptical. “We’ll get them all out - that’s what we’re here for, and we _won’t_ give up until we’ve freed all the slaves.”

She’s surprised by her own conviction - until she thinks of Kas, bright and smiling and free. Kix, next to her, quietly furious and doing all he can to heal his brothers so they can all be free. Anakin and how he was freed, he got out, then found the opportunity to come straight back and help everyone else.

“Well, we’re going to need a lot of luck to pull that one off,” Aza says, a small smile on their face.

“We’ll manage,” she says with a grin. Then she frowns a tiny bit, puts her hand to her forehead - something's wrong, but she's not sure what–

Someone _screams_.

“Tano?”

“Ahsoka!”

She’s on the ground - she can feel the dirt on her face, feel that she’s sideways. “Who - who is that?”

“What?” Aza pulls her up. “You just fell over. What’s wrong?”

“Someone screamed,” she says, but…

“Nobody screamed,” Kix says slowly. “Was it the Force?”

It was, she thinks. But she can’t… she can’t feel it any more. Something in the back of her head, something she didn’t even know was there, has gone quiet, silent.

“I don’t know,” she says. “But something’s wrong.”

Aza looks back and forth between them. “The Force?” they say.

Kix sighs. “All we can do is do our job,” he says softly.

As much as it frustrates her, he’s right. All she knows is that something bad happened - she couldn’t follow it back to the source if she tried. The only thing she can do now, the only way she can help, is to go help free all the people she can.

“Fine,” she says, but she takes a moment to stop and listen.

“What is it?” Jesse asks quietly. “Are you–”

Ahsoka turns and faces the darkness behind them - the darkness of the corridor, and the darkness in the Force.

“Poor little youngling, left all alone,” Ventress says, and steps into the light. Her lightsabers ignite, glowing a red far brighter than the corridor’s lights and shading the color over everything. “What a pity - to come this far, and still fail.”

“We haven’t failed yet,” Ahsoka says, and ignites her own lightsaber, the green light mingling with the red to form some unnamable color in between the two.

Ventress grins, baring her teeth. “Your master has.”

“He’s not my master,” Ahsoka snaps.

“A _Jedi_?” she hears Aza mutter behind her, but she doesn’t have time to respond to that.

“Go,” she tells Jesse and Kix. “Do what we came here to do - I can hold her off for long enough.”

Ventress’s eyes narrow, and Ahsoka relaxes herself into a defensive stance, solid and strong against the corridor’s stone; both of them know that Ahsoka isn’t boasting, she’s not overstating her abilities. Ahsoka can hold Ventress off for as long as she needs to, as long as she doesn’t get stupid and attack again. As long as Ventress doesn’t get backup.

Neither of those things are certainties.

Jesse, Kix, and Aza run; Ventress attacks, and Ahsoka blocks.

Shien is a form that hasn’t been fully used in centuries, Ahsoka knows; djem so may have been the variant for deflecting lightsabers, but there's a reason her teaching masters have always called shien the _perseverance form_.

“You are talented, for one so young,” Ventress says. “And yet - Skywalker hasn’t chosen you for a padawan yet, you said? How does it feel, to be held back?”

“He’s not holding me back,” Ahsoka says, and blocks Ventress’s next attack. “Maybe I don’t want to be a padawan just yet.” Oh, no, nope, that is _not_ the thing to let Ventress of all people know. She’s screwed.

Ventress laughs, low and loud. “Aww, is the little Jedi having doubts? Doubts about your place in the galaxy? Doubts about the _light_?” Ventress spits the word, a mockery rather than a real question. She doesn’t attack, other than with her words; her lightsabers still burn red, but they sit at her sides as she watches how Ahsoka reacts to her words.

Ahsoka isn’t willing to drop her defensive stance, not when Ventress is almost faster than her; but she also thinks.

Taunts and attacks, words and hints - she’d been thinking of this, days ago, before she’d gotten distracted by the truth about the clones.

“Maybe I am,” Ahsoka says. “Maybe I am having doubts about the Jedi, and about the galaxy. But that doesn’t mean that I’d ever doubt the light.”

“A pity,” Ventress says, almost kindly, for her. “You’ll die, then.”

“Wait!” Ahsoka says, before Ventress can attack. “Just - who are you?”

Ventress blinks. “What?”

“My name’s Ahsoka Tano,” Ahsoka says. “I’m one of the Strays.” She takes a deep breath, and takes a risk. “I’m free to leave the Jedi Order any time I want. Are you?”

“Of course,” Ventress says, baring her teeth. “I–”

“Or are you still a slave?” Ahsoka says quietly.

Ventress _freezes_.

Then she _howls_ and attacks Ahsoka, wildly, recklessly, nothing like her usual elegance; Ahsoka can barely keep up with the flurry of blows, with the fury that Ventress is emanating into the Force.

Her fury grows and grows and _grows_ ; Ahsoka wouldn’t be surprised if everyone in the palace can feel Ventress’s rage.

Ahsoka wants to say something else, but she doesn’t know what; this plan looks like it maybe sorta backfired a little bit. She breaks away for a split second, half a moment when Ventress isn’t bearing down on her, and realizes that the shaking she feels isn’t coming from her own body.

The corridor itself is shaking, rumbling with the Force of Ventress’s anger.

It’s a good thing Ahsoka jumped back when she did, because the corridor gives one last angry rumble and cracks, a cavern opening itself between Ahsoka and Ventress.

Both of them stop, pause, collect themselves; neither of them want to be buried under a mountain of sand and rock.

Ventress stares across the chasm at her. It’s a small chasm, honestly; either of them could jump it. Neither of them do.

“Look how much power you lack,” Ventress says finally, but her heart isn’t really in it.

“We’re always taught that letting your emotions build like that isn’t healthy,” Ahsoka offers. “It’s like… tearing yourself apart, like you tore the corridor apart. It was pretty strong, though,” she finishes, trying to be nice.

Ventress scoffs. “This plan of yours was futile. You’ll never defeat the Hutts.”

“What, do you _want_ Gardulla to win?” Ahsoka asks, deactivating her lightsaber and crossing her arms. “Do you _want_ all the children on Tatooine to be slaves again?”

Ventress flinches at that - only a tiny bit, but Ahsoka’s paying attention, her eyes and her montrals tuned to the figure standing across the divide from her. “One of these days, youngling, I will carve you up into small pieces and feed you to something more deserving of the protein.”

Ahsoka blinks. “Well, that’s… delightful.” It’s really, really not. She turns away anyways; even if Ventress attacks while her back is turned, she’ll be able to sense it. “Look. If you ever want help, if you ever want an out, even if you just want someone to listen to you, someone who won’t judge…”

“Who, _you_?” Ventress’s sneer is clear, even though Ahsoka can’t see her face.

“Shmi Skywalker,” Ahsoka says, and Ventress pauses. Ahsoka grins a little bit, to herself. Of course Ventress won’t go to _her_ , but Shmi… well, Shmi is special. Ahsoka hopes Shmi won’t mind her telling Ventress that she’ll listen; Shmi has helped so many Jedi, maybe here’s a chance for her to help… well, someone who’s not a Jedi. “She’s Knight Skywalker’s mother. She’s the general of the 144th legion. She was a slave here, before she escaped and found the Jedi. If you want to talk, she’ll listen, no matter what.”

“Your hope is futile,” Ventress says flatly. “I will _never_ go to a Jedi for help - all you do is destroy.”

Ahsoka wants to retort - I’m not the one who broke the corridor, she thinks - but that would be counterproductive, ugh.

Ventress doesn’t attack her as Ahsoka turns and leaves, walks away down the corridor. In the distance, around a bend, Ahsoka can hear the hum of her red lightsabers shut off.

All she can do now is go find the others and help them. But maybe she’s helped someone else already, today. Only time will tell.

 

* * *

 

 

Ahsoka runs down the corridors, down the tunnels, taking turns and ducking into side passages, and it’s only when she leaps up into a crawlspace in the ceiling and is halfway down it that she realizes she shouldn’t have any idea where she’s going.

It barely even feels like the Force is telling her where to go, is the most frustrating thing; that she could understand. This feels like someone is whispering in her ear, telling her where to go. When she tries to turn toward that whisper, listen closer, though, it vanishes. Just like in some of her dreams - the harder she reaches for something, the further she gets from it.

To actually know where to go, she has to not listen, while also listening with the back of her mind - it’s enough to get anyone tied into knots. She goes slower, crawling through the tiny sub-tunnel, one that probably isn’t supposed to be here in the first place; Gardulla can’t be happy, having a space in her palace she won’t fit.

She gets the brief impression of laughter, but again, when she tries to turn to face the voice, it’s gone.

Deeper and deeper she goes into the palace, taking twists and turns, climbing through tunnels and dodging guards on patrol. Wherever she’s going, it’s definitely _not_ towards the slaves’ halls.

“I hope you know what you’re doing,” she mutters, half to herself and half to the whisperer. “Because if you don’t, I’m screwed.”

The whisper doesn’t reply - because she’s paying attention to it, trying to focus in and hear. Ahsoka closes her eyes and breathes deeply and decides to just keep walking.

Though it isn’t really walking, from then on - there’s another crawlspace that Ahsoka is prompted to leap up into.

_Quiet_ , she thinks, or maybe hears - it’s hard to tell, but she ignores where it came from because that’s good advice, especially when you’re sneaking around in the palace of a Hutt.

At the end of the crawlspace is a grate tilted down into the domed ceiling of a room, and beyond the grating is light.

Light and voices.

She stays back, listening as well as she can while not being seen, but the things she can feel from the room are strange.

Something is said in Huttese, but Huttese differently than she’s heard it before - a deep, booming voice. Gardulla, she realizes. This is the slave-master herself.

“The Great Gardulla wishes to make a trade,” a tinny voice says - a protocol droid, if Ahsoka doesn’t miss her guess. “You have abandoned her in her time of need, after she had granted you assistance in the past; but she wishes to resume that alliance, now that her victory is assured.”

“I told my Bando Gora to leave Tatooine because I already have what I want from you,” says a voice, lilting and hateful, though tinny through the echo of a hologram.

Ahsoka feels a shiver go through her lekku as she realizes who this is.

“The Great Gardulla has yet another prize that might interest you, Lady Vulsion,” the protocol droid parrots the Huttese syllables once Gardulla has finished speaking. “Anakin Skywalker, frozen and helpless, oh dear.”

The ‘oh dear’ probably didn’t come from Gardulla.

Ahsoka definitely agrees with that ‘oh dear,’ though, and she curses herself out - that’s the strangeness she’s feeling. People frozen in stasis. She’d just felt this a few days ago, too.

And one of those people frozen is Knight Skywalker. Anakin.

Skyguy.

Vulsion laughs, long and loud. “That’s _hilarious_ ,” she says, finally, and something about her tone is… different. “But… mm… no. Nope, I’m good!”

“The Great Gardulla inquires as to your meaning,” the protocol droid says hesitantly.

“What I mean,” Vulsion says, almost conversationally save for that hint of malice, “Is that I’ll have fun watching your palace fall.”

Ahsoka can’t be the only one wondering what in the Force is going on.

“The Great Gardulla assures you that her victory is guaranteed,” the protocol droid says.

“I’m sure,” Vulsion says. “Who knows - if you do come out successful, perhaps we shall trade again. If not…” she probably gestures here, a shrug or something, but Ahsoka isn’t close enough to see. “Have fun, queen of the mighty slugs.”

The protocol droid says “Oh dear,” again, very quietly, as Gardulla roars.

Ahsoka decides that it’s safe enough to move closer - or at least, worth the risk to be able to see inside the room.

Skyguy is frozen in carbonite, looking pained and angry even in shades of grey; beside the block containing him is another block with another human, frozen with an almost resigned look on his face. In the room’s center is a carbon-freezing pit that makes Ahsoka want to shudder. But what actually makes Ahsoka shudder is Gardulla; she’s giant and green and sluglike and glaring at everything in the room like it’s personally offended her. Ahsoka doesn’t have high hopes for that protocol droid’s survival, which sucks; it’s funny, for a protocol droid.

Her vantage point is a good one; she can see the whole room, looking down from a spot near the edge of the domed ceiling and the walls. Or maybe that’s a bad vantage point, because it means she has to look at Gardulla. Ugh.

Ahsoka has to do something, she has to act.

But _how_? Would a Jedi try to subdue Gardulla so she could be taken back to the Republic for a trial? There’s a carbon freezing pit right there, seeming like the perfect solution. Ahsoka’s not sure she could push Gardulla in, though; she can’t usually lift anything heavier than a fruit with the Force. And there’s not anything that size in the room.

Wait.

Yes, there is.

It’s small and grey against the dark brown rock. A thermal detonator.

Ahsoka wants to say that she ponders over whether this is the right thing to do, meditates on proper use of the Force. But she gets the idea, and she just… does it.

She knows that carbonite freezing shields from life scans, shields from ray shielding, and shields from concussive detonations; the protocol droid will probably have its limbs blown off, but those are reattachable.

A light squeeze of the Force sets the detonator beeping; a push sends it rolling across the floor.

Gardulla only notices it when it bumps against her side.

She rumbles something in Huttese.

“Your Vastness, it appears to be a thermal detonator,” the protocol droid says.

The blast sends Ahsoka flying backwards through the crawlspace and makes her montrals ring. She feels Gardulla in the Force, then suddenly she doesn’t. It’s like the Hutt was never there.

Except she was there - it’s very clear that she was there when Ahsoka walks into the room through its main doors.

She walks out and vomits before walking back in.

The protocol droid is in pieces on the floor, but not as many pieces as she’d thought it would be; it’s still active.

“Oh, my!” it says. “Goodness; don’t hurt me, I’m just a droid.”

Ahsoka smiles weakly. “I’m not going to hurt you. Do you know how to get these open?” she asks, gesturing to the carbonite blocks.

“Indeed I do! In fact, I am fluent in over eight million forms of communication and several thousand operating systems, including–”

“What button do I press?”

“The panel on the side should serve to release them,” the droid says huffily.

“Thanks,” Ahsoka says, and kneels down by Skyguy, pressing the buttons on the panel.

It’s creepy, seeing him colored all over in grey metal, seeing him glow red, but then the carbonite melts away and leaves just the Jedi, groaning and blinking in the light. “Ahsoka?”

A bit of tension she didn’t even know she had leaks away; she hadn’t realized how quiet it was, physically and in her mind. Is that what it’s like, not having any Jedi around? (Or is there another reason that Knight Skywalker is so reachable, to her mind, a reason like a growing training bond - no.) Ahsoka pushes those thoughts out of her head; there are more important things to do right now.

She leans forward and hugs him.

“Hey, there, Snips,” he says quietly, and she can feel him turning his head, looking around the room. “I… wow. You…”

“There was a thermal detonator on the floor, so I just…” she sniffs a bit. She hadn’t meant to do that, but now her face feels uncomfortably leaky.

He hugs her tighter. “Thank you,” he says, and that’s not what she expected to hear. “You did well.”

Ahsoka pulls away and wipes her eyes. They’ve only teared up a bit. Okay, a lot, but whatever.

Skyguy looks over at the other person frozen in carbonite and closes his eyes. “My friend Kitster,” he says, to Ahsoka’s unasked question.

Then he looks back at her, his eyes tired. “Let’s get out of here.”

She can’t agree more.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Two chapters left :)
> 
> Again, I can't guarantee that I'll find time to reply to comments; I've got a test tomorrow and another test next Monday and a presentation on Tuesday and another one on Wednesday and two papers to write again, preferably, by Wednesday, and self evaluations also by wednesday and as you may guess I am a teeny tiny bit swamped. Thank you all for the luck you've wished me; unfortunately, at this point we're a little closer to the "miracle" stage.
> 
> No, I'm exaggerating a bit. I'll be fine; I just need to get my shit together. Sigh. This weekend's going to be _fun_.


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> With Gardulla dead, it's all just wrap-up.

 

With Gardulla dead, it’s all just wrap-up. Beru and Lefter had managed to get Gardulla’s security down, and with the droid armies inoperable due to sabotage, the army had no trouble opening the way out for Gardulla’s slaves. Former slaves, Ahsoka thinks, and smiles.

Now there’s even more work to do, though: clearing out Gardulla’s palace, finding places for these hundreds of freed people, contacting Coruscant and the Council and letting them know what’s happened.

In all the chaos and confusion, Ahsoka finds herself running around doing all sorts of random tasks as they need to be done. Helping lift up walls, helping run messages - not helping find people or things hidden around the palace, because they’ve got fully-grown togruta with arching montrals who can already hear further than she’ll be able to for years.

Eventually, after hours of work, she finds herself peeling tubers in Gardulla’s kitchens. They can’t ask the former slaves to work, not now, and someone needs to make the food. It does make sense.

Except no, it really doesn’t, she’s a _carnivore_ , she has no clue how to prepare tubers.

“Like this,” says a person behind her, taking the tuber and skinning it with a knife. “Try to get all the pieces of the peel, but as little of the insides as possible.”

Ahsoka nods, because that much was obvious, but seeing someone else do it does give her a solid strategy. “Thanks,” she says, turning to face the person.

It’s the other human who’d been frozen in carbonite - Skyguy’s friend.

“Kitster Banai,” he says. “You’re Ahsoka Tano, yes?”

“Yes,” she says. “Um.”

“Here, let me help you with those,” he says, and takes about half of the enormous pile of tubers. “We want these done as fast as possible, after all, and many hands make lighter work.”

“Thanks,” she says - again, she said that before, she’s repeating herself–

Kitster sighs, never pausing in his tuber-peeling. “I’m not scary, I promise.”

“It’s not that,” she says, and bites her lip, looking down at the tuber she’s half-peeled. “I’m… I don’t know.”

Kitster just nods. “Making a tough decision, and that’s spilling out into everything else?”

Ahsoka glances up at him, narrowing her eyes a little. “Sarad talked to you, didn’t she.”

“She did,” Kitster admits without a hint of shame. “She figured you might want to talk to someone who isn’t affiliated with the Jedi or the army or even really the Republic, though I must admit I’ve got a few friends on Naboo.”

That’s… unexpected, in a few different ways. “How did you make friends on Naboo?” Ahsoka asks. “That’s a… very different planet.”

“It definitely is,” Kitster says. “I’ve seen a few holos, though I’ve never been. And Naboo’s been one of the safe places to end the Freedom Trail for years; there’s a solid community of people living there who have escaped from here. I’m friends with many of them; also friend with some of the Naboo officials who have helped make that a reality.”

Ahsoka blinks. “I didn’t realize there was a whole Freedom Trail happening.”

“Of course there is - you don’t think we just left our family and friends back here when we managed to escape, did you?” Kitster asks.

Ahsoka shakes her head slowly.

“People escape, people are freed, and they help out those who are still trying to become free,” Kitster says, and hesitates a bit.

She can guess pretty easily what he’s hesitating about. “Like what Skyguy’s doing with the army.”

“Exactly,” Kitster says quietly. “And you… you’re having doubts about whether that’s the best way?”

It’s not accusative, not judging - just curious.

Ahsoka puts down the tuber and the knife so she doesn’t accidentally cut herself.

“We’re taught that we, as Jedi, are supposed to help people,” she says, looking down. “Shmi says - she says that it’s all right if that’s not our path, it’s all right if we can’t dedicate ourselves to helping people. Some people need to help themselves first, some people need to put other things first in life - there are more ways for us to go than just being a Jedi. But I _want_ to help people. I…” she takes a deep breath. “I _wanted_ to be a Jedi. And I don’t know if being a Jedi is the best way to help any more.” There’s so much more unsaid - so much more bottled up in her throat. It hurts, it _hurts_ , looking at Skyguy, at _Anakin_ , and knowing that if he wanted to, he couldn’t leave the war. He’s trapped here, and he doesn’t know it, does he?

She’d felt, through the bond that she’s still trying to pretend doesn’t exist, how he’d felt walking into Gardulla’s palace. If she becomes a Jedi… is it like that?

“Well, what are your other options?” Kitster asks.

Ahsoka blinks. “What?”

Kitster glances over at her. “If you’re not sure about the Jedi, go through and think about what else you could be, if not a Jedi.”

Ahsoka stares down at the tubers. What else _could_ she be?

“I can’t think of anything,” she says quietly. “It’s just… always seemed like the Jedi are the right path. Until now.”

“There are hundreds of options in the galaxy,” Kitster says. “You could go to school, learn a trade, be a mechanic or a doctor or a teacher; you could make your way as a bounty hunter, though you may want to wait until you’re older for that one. You could stay here, with the friends you’ve made, and help them rebuild their lives.”

It’s comforting, to hear possibilities laid out like that - to know that they’re solid, that they exist. Especially that last one. But it also feels wrong, in a way.

“I don’t know,” Ahsoka says, still looking down, not quite able to voice the discomfort she feels with those options.

Kitster nods slowly. “There’s this thing that Shmi does - well, lots of adults do it, Kelin and old Jira and… me, I suppose, now. But Shmi always did it the best, asking all the right questions. So. What are the things you can do?”

“The things I can do?” Ahsoka asks. “Like, joining the Jedi, or going and doing something else?”

“Even smaller,” Kitster says. “For finding another job - what are your skills? For changing the parts of the Jedi you don’t like - what can you do there?”

Ahsoka pauses.

“Changing the parts of the Jedi I don’t like,” she says, slowly, letting that thought sink into her mind.

Kitster pauses. “Oh,” he says, softly. “That’s always an option too. Working from the inside. The Freedom Trail - not everyone on it was free. But slaves were able to help, let people stay in their houses, watch the palace for guard patrols. Gardulla knew to watch me, she knew that I was rebellious, so she froze me in carbonite; but there were others here in the palace helping out, ones that I could distract attention from.”

“And they were free to act,” Ahsoka realizes. “Like Aza, when they helped Jesse and Kix?”

“Maybe a little more organized than that,” Kitster says. “Aza is - was - new here, fresh-caught; they didn’t really know how to be subtle, not the way that the Freedom Trail needed, but basically yes. They helped where they could.”

Something about that phrase rings in her mind - maybe something Knight Skywalker had said. Something he’d mentioned Master Tachi saying. _We do what we can_.

There’s a quiet brush at the back of her mind, nothing distinct, but clearly something. She pretends she doesn’t know what it is, looking up at Kitster again.

“There are always options,” Kitster says. “Working within the system, working from outside the system, working against the system - that’s something Beru should have mentioned, probably. But it’s a lesson she’s learned so deeply it’s just a truth to her, no need to be spoken.”

“I can see that,” Ahsoka says. “I’ve only heard a bit about what happened, but…”

Kitster nods. “It was hard. The rest is her story to tell. Here’s another lesson, though: working inside the system doesn’t mean you have to follow their rules. You disagree with something the Jedi are doing and want to change that; you can go talk to your Council, go get laws passed. Or you can do what Ani’s doing. Both things help; both things are probably necessary. You can do either. You can find another way to help.”

For the first time in days, Ahsoka can feel herself start to relax, release the tiny bits of tension she hadn’t even realized she was holding.

If she becomes a Jedi, she may become trapped, but that doesn’t mean she’ll be _stuck_. She’ll have her options, her ways to try and fix all the things that are going wrong.

If she doesn’t become a Jedi, she’ll still have her friends. She’ll still be able to call up Barriss, and maybe Shmi. She could find a place here, with Kitster, with Kas.

No matter what, Ahsoka will always be one of Skywalker’s Strays - and the Strays find their own paths, don’t they?

“I don’t know what I’m going to do,” she says out loud, and grins. This time, that doesn’t mean she’s lost. It means she has choices.

“I know what you’re going to do,” Kitster says, and it’s only his humorous tone that doesn’t make her worry.

“What am I going to do?” she asks, suspicious.

“You’re going to help me finish peeling these tubers,” he says. “We’ve got a lot of people to feed, after all.”

Ahsoka rolls her eyes, but she picks up the tuber and the knife and gets to work.

 

* * *

 

 

When Anakin can find a minute - hours later, so long he actually doesn’t know how long he’s been coordinating squads to go out and find the remaining bits of Gardulla’s forces and planning out where the freed people are going to stay and convincing them that yes, he’s with the Republic, he’s here to help–

Hours later, Anakin finally finds a minute to close his eyes and let the carbonite headache he’s been holding back surface.

It’s like feeling timezone-lagged, but much worse; his body had gone from non-stasis to stasis then back to non-stasis over the course of what, half an hour? Not even counting the Force whiplash, that’s not easy for biological things to handle.

And the Force whiplash is _definitely_ worth counting.

He gets why stasis is worse for Force-sensitives than for non-sensitives now. Because while his body may have been frozen, his Force-sense certainly hadn’t. The inside of carbonite feels the same way the outside feels, to the Force. Like a dream - maybe it _was_ a dream. He of all people should know that dreams aren’t necessarily false.

There had been so many threads, so many ties to him, to his self - he could feel his mother, Obi-Wan, Beru. The closest - dim as it was - he’d grabbed on to that one, or maybe flowed down that one, to the person at the end of that bond. Trying to remember what he’d seen feels like bashing his head against a rock wall, or maybe like trying to grasp a vacuum, but he can remember it if he tries.

Anakin can remember Ahsoka, Ventress’s twin blades glowing red - he knows that a lot had happened, but the only piece of that encounter that sticks in his mind are Ahsoka’s words, that Ventress is tearing herself apart. He knows that he’d been the whisper that had guided her to Gardulla’s carbon freezing room. But all of it… it had all felt like a dream. Maybe it could have been more solid for a more accomplished Jedi Master, but it had felt like being in the Force, and nothing but the Force.

That on top of his body not being sure whether it wants to throw up or eat everything in sight makes for a… what would Obi-Wan call it? A _generally unpleasant experience_.

“Skywalker?”

Anakin wants to punch the person who’s interrupting his first bit of rest in hours, but there’s something about the way they’re saying his name that makes him pause and look up.

There’s a duros and a togruta standing awkwardly in the entry-way of the room he’s holed up in. The togruta has the same orange-red skin as Ahsoka and Master Shaak Ti, though her montrals are striped in dark teal rather than blue. The duros shifts awkwardly; they’re the one who’s spoken.

“That’s me,” he says, then pauses. “Unless…” His mother has so many misadventures that he can’t keep track of all the people she meets along the way, but something about a duros and a togruta with vertical stripe markings down her face rings a bell.

“We met your mother once, I think,” the duros says. “I’m Aza; this is Xuka.”

Anakin sits up. He recognizes those names. “On Cato Neimoidia, right?”

Xuka sighs in relief. “Oh, good, that would have been really awkward if we were wrong.”

“She never said she was a _Jedi_ ,” Aza mutters, sounding incredulous. “Not on the ship, not when we were comming back and forth…”

“She still wasn’t very used to it back then, I think,” Anakin says. A lot of his mom’s more disreputable friends - and, by extension, his friends, in a way - still don’t know she’s a Jedi. It’s not that she’s not used to being one, not now; now it’s that she’s all-too-conscious of how her status will change things, will make others view her. For all that she feels at home in the Jedi Temple, her lightsaber in her hand, Anakin knows that some part of her will only feel comfortable in the rougher neighborhoods where she can talk to people who grew up like her.

That’s not something he’s going to tell Aza and Xuka, though, old friends of his mom’s or not.

“That bounty hunter, Fett,” Aza says. “He’s the one who got cloned, right?”

Anakin nods. “That’s a… pretty long story, though.”

Xuka snorts. “I can imagine,” she says. “It was _tense_ on that ship, trying not to let Fett know that one of the fugitives he was looking for was sitting right next to him singing his baby to sleep. Hilarious in hindsight, though.”

Aza shakes their head. “The things you learn about people. We haven’t spoken to her in a few years - just fell out of contact, I suppose.”

“I’m probably going to be comming her later, if you want to say hello again,” Anakin says. “How did you two end up here, though?”

“Bad luck,” Xuka says. “Smuggling run gone wrong - not that we would ever do anything against the law, of course,” she adds very quickly.

“Of course,” Anakin agrees solemnly. “You’d never even consider breaking any laws or planetary regulations, especially not to help someone who might have been on the run from a certain federation at the time.”

Xuka flashes him a sharp grin. “That would just be silly.”

Anakin grins back, but then pain flashes at the back of his skull and he buries his head in his hands and swears.

“You all right?” Aza asks, putting a hand on his shoulder.

He doesn’t mean to growl, he really doesn’t. “You try getting dipped in carbonite and have to pretend you’re fine for hours and tell me how _all right_ you are.”

Aza winces. “No, that doesn’t sound good.”

“Have you even seen one of your medics yet?” Xuka asks. “They gotta have something for that type of headache.”

“They’re all busy,” Anakin says into the comfortingly dark cave he’s made with his arms. “There are people with actual injuries that need to be taken care of. This’ll wear off eventually.”

“If you say so,” Aza says. They sound dubious, but at least they’re not pressing the issue.

“We can leave you alone to rest,” Xuka says. “Come on, Aza, let’s–”

“No, you’re good,” Anakin interrupts quickly. “I don’t mind, really; it’s mostly my eyes that hurt.”

He can hear Aza sigh. “If you say so, kid.”

“I’m not a kid!” he protests.

“The first time we heard about you, your mother was talking about how much of a pain you were to feed as an infant,” Xuka says. “You’re always going to be a kid. Kid,” she adds gleefully.

Anakin groans. He likes meeting his mother’s friends, he really does. But this _always happens_. “Of course she was. How did you even get _on_ to that topic?”

“Well, Fett had his kid with him,” Aza says. “He was a tiny little thing, and she gave Fett lots of advice about parenting, and stuff.”

“Oh,” says a voice from the doorway. Beru’s voice.

Anakin looks up, even though it makes his head throb a little. “Beru. Hey.”

“Hey,” she says warily, looking between Aza and Xuka.

“Did you ever hear,” Anakin asks - not _did Fett ever tell you_ , that would be too awkward - “About that time my mom had to get off Cato Neimoidia?”

Beru’s eyes widen. “You’re _those_ smugglers,” she says, and grins. “Now _that’s_ a coincidence.”

“I sure hope it is,” Aza mutters quietly, almost too quietly for him to hear. Then, louder, “You’d be Sarad, then?”

Beru nods. “Yes. It’s nice to meet you. But I actually need Ani - there’s some logistics that need to be handled before we can call Coruscant.” She pauses. “And before that, he needs to see a medic.”

“It’s _just a headache_ ,” he says, fed up. “I’ll be _fine_.”

“Don’t make me make Kitster ask you,” she warns him.

Anakin pauses. That’s… a real threat; Kitster can do that wide-eyed sincere thing that his mom can do, where he can’t bring himself to say no. Kitster will put a hand on his shoulder and start talking and then the next thing he knows, Anakin will be in the infirmary.

“Has Kitster seen a medic?” he asks, challenging Beru; that’ll be the only thing that can save him, if Kitster has been avoiding the infirmary too.

“Yes,” Beru says smugly.

Dammit. “Fine.” Anakin pushes himself up to a standing position, then looks between Aza and Xuka. “If you want to say hi to my mom, feel free to stop by the comm center sometime later.”

Aza nods. “We might,” they say.

Beru leads Anakin out of the room and down the hallways.

“You should have seen a medic hours ago,” she mutters.

“I was busy,” he reminds her. “They need me to coordinate things with the Council, and make sure that nobody’s getting lost in the confusion, and–”

“Fine, fine,” Beru says. “But still.”

Anakin just shrugs; maybe he should have checked in with Kix, at least, but Kix was busy too.

They walk in silence, the two of them, mandalorian and Jedi, tatooinians both.

“You don’t think it was a coincidence, that those two were enslaved,” Beru says, after they’ve entered a quiet corridor.

“Maybe it was,” Anakin says. “But for two people who met my mom, to be recently caught, and enslaved _here_?”

Beru grimaces. “I see. That does sort of reek of some sort of plot.”

Anakin wants to bang his head against the wall - both to get rid of the headache, and to get rid of the building frustration he feels. “There are so many things that are _weird_ about this campaign,” he says. “The Bando Gora left just as we arrived, and they would have been the best counter against us. Those intercepted transmissions - they make some of those failed ambushes make sense, but _how_ were we bugged? Even after we stopped using the comms we thought were bugged, Gardulla knew that we were coming, that _I_ was coming.”

“And now this,” Beru says softly. “When you put the pieces together, it’s clear that _something_ is going on.”

“Something, but _what_?” Anakin takes a deep breath, tries to let go of that frustration. It’s not helpful here; it won’t help him figure out the answer to whatever is going on. “We should let Obi-Wan know. He’s good at putting pieces together.”

Beru hesitates, though she doesn’t say anything.

Anakin stares at her. “You think we shouldn’t tell anyone,” he says.

“I think there’s a risk that the leak we had wasn’t sourced in our transmissions,” she says, not looking Anakin in the eye.

He swallows, his throat suddenly too dry even for Tatooine. “You think there’s a leak on Coruscant. In the Temple.”

“I think that I’ve seen the Sith twist too many well-meaning people to their own purposes, knowing or not,” Beru says. “I think that’s a risk we can’t take.”

Anakin closes his eyes, letting the sound of Beru’s feet on the ground guide him. That makes almost too much sense, and it makes him furious. A leak in the Jedi - one of their own, _betraying_ them–

He feels the anger tighten his hands into fists, swell through his veins, and he tries to let it go.

“Who do we tell, then?” he asks, as calmly as he can. “We need to tell _someone_. You and I can’t do this alone, not this _and_ following the money trail _and_ fighting the war.”

“Kitster, probably also Rex,” Beru says. “Maybe… maybe Padmé, too. We were planning to ask her to help with the money trail anyways; if we’re trusting her that much, we may as well trust her all the way.”

That makes Anakin grin, and the idea of Padmé in general makes something light up inside; his anger doesn’t drain away fully, but it does lessen, lighten, relax.

“We can do this,” Anakin says, opening his eyes and meeting Beru’s squarely. “You, me, Kitster, Padmé, Rex.”

“We’ll track down the Sith,” Beru says. “We’ll find out what’s going on, and we’ll make them pay for what they’ve done.”

A better Jedi might say _we’ll stop them_ or _we’ll make sure they can’t hurt anyone_.

“We will,” Anakin agrees.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One chapter to go.
> 
> Something I've been wondering - do people prefer this type of story, with lots of shorter chapters, or more like the last part, with just a few longer chapters? I'm honestly not sure which I prefer, there's a lot about my writing style that I'm figuring out, but I'm wondering if you guys have a strong preference either way.
> 
> Again, I'm not going to be able to answer comments until probably Thursday or Friday; I also probably won't have anything new up for a little while, because we're reaching the end of my NaNoWriMo work and I haven't had a chance to write much since then because, again, finals have been kicking my ass. We all know how often I update when I'm bored, though, so who knows how long it'll be? :P
> 
> Until then, enjoy <3


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Moving backwards, moving forwards.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finals are mostly done with, save for finishing touches and that last test; I'll try to answer all the comments by Friday, but who knows what complications will arise? Of course, after that will be winter break, and hopefully I'll get a good amount of writing done. Even I'm not yet sure what the next part will involve, or who the POV character(s) will be; probably Shmi, since it's been a while since we've had her POV, but there are a few other plotlines that have been floating around in my head. We'll see what happens.

 

The next day, the suns rise, as they always have.

Anakin finds Ahsoka high up on one of the spires of Gardulla’s palace. That’s _on_ one of the spires, not _in_ one of the spires - the windows are big enough to climb out, and she’s perched on the roof, staring out at the desert.

“Scoot over,” he calls up, then climbs out after her.

The sky is light enough to see clearly, though it’s still not fully daytime; Ahsoka has left him enough room on the spire to sit comfortably. He sits facing her, crossing his legs in an image that isn’t quite mirrored.

“I saw some of what you said to Ventress,” he says abruptly, then winces a bit. That’s not really the place to start this conversation, but he can’t really think of anything else to say.

Ahsoka is clearly startled. “You did? How much?”

“Not much,” he says. “The end part, mostly, when she broke the corridor. You said that she was tearing herself apart, and…” he blinks. There’s a part he hadn’t remembered until now, until he says it out loud. “You told her to go talk to my mother.”

Ahsoka nods slowly, biting her lip. “I… Ventress is bad, she’s dark, she’s working with the Sith. But I think she’s also hurting inside. When I talked to Kas, about the thing where you listen to what people aren’t saying, it gave me an idea. Did you notice that when you say the Separatists are slavers, Ventress doesn’t respond - and even when she has an opening, she doesn’t say anything about slavery in the Republic?”

Anakin exhales slowly. “I hadn’t put those pieces together,” he says. Ventress, a former slave… it makes sense, if he looks at it sideways. “So you told her to talk to my mother. That’s good, then; she can puzzle out the rest.” Anakin’s not going to lie to himself - he’s worried that Ventress will hurt Mom; for all that his mom is a skilled Jedi Master, for all that she’s faced down Krell and Grievous and many others besides, lightsaber combat is not her strong point. But he’s able to push past that worry, for once - because lightsaber combat may not be her strongest point, but talking to people and making friends of her enemies _is_.

“But how did you know that in the first place?” Ahsoka finally demands.

“I don’t really know,” Anakin says honestly. “But I was in the carbonite by that point, and… you can feel from the outside, how it feels like people in stasis are dreaming. So I guess I just dreamed of you.”

“You led me to Gardulla, too, didn’t you?” Ahsoka says, her eyes wide. “That was _you_. But I thought that people in stasis couldn’t do anything, not even think.”

Anakin nods. He’d thought that, too. “I think it’s the Force,” he says. “It was in the Force that I was able to see what was going on, and Jedi are always warned that we’ll have a worse time in stasis than non-sensitives. Besides, I’m… pretty strong in the Force.”

“So you could reach the Force even in stasis,” Ahsoka says quietly. “Or reach it more clearly, at least. And you reached me.”

Anakin opens his mouth to reply, but he’s not quite sure what to say. This is what he’d come up here to discuss, he’s gone over dozens of ways to say it, and still he has no clue how he’s going to do this.

But he looks at Ahsoka, and takes a moment to listen, instead of speaking.

She’s staring to the side, off into the endless desert below them. There’s a light dusting of sand across the top of the spire, across Ahsoka’s arms and legs; she’s been out here for a while, long enough for the early morning’s winds to reach up to the spire and then die down.

His shields usually stop other peoples’ emotions from leaking over to him, but he can feel hers - doubt and hope and trepidation all mixed together.

Up here, on the spire in the air, the memory that comes easiest to his mind is sitting with Master Dooku, at the Jedi Temple’s peak, and learning how to meditate surrounded by the sky. The same place where Master Qui-Gon learned to meditate.

Qui-Gon, who is missing, who is presumed dead. Maybe Gardulla’s records will have answers, but they won’t know until someone has the chance to analyze them. With all the data needing to be combed through, with the war occupying all the Jedi’s attention, who knows how long that will take?

“You ship out in a few hours, don’t you?” Ahsoka asks after a few long minutes.

“Yes,” Anakin admits. “We don’t know where we’ll be sent next, but they want us in space and ready to jump as soon as possible.”

She nods, biting her lip, running her fingers over a worry stone in her hand, probably a gift from Kelin or Kas.

“Ahsoka,” Anakin says, and pauses, then forges ahead. “Are you okay?”

She blinks. “Am I okay?”

“I’m not doing this right,” Anakin mutters to himself, though loudly enough for Ahsoka to hear. “It’s… learning about slavery, learning about all the harsh things that can happen in the galaxy.” He takes a breath. “All the things that can happen even within the Jedi - it’s hard.” And isn’t _that_ true, with what Beru suspects? That’s not the point, though.

She looks down, down at the spire below them, carved yellow-orange-grey stone. “I’ve been having a lot of doubts,” she admits. “But… I talked to Kitster. He said that I could find another option, but he also said… you’re working from the inside. Trying to get the clones out. Helping them be free.”

“I am,” Anakin says, then waits for Ahsoka to continue. The more she talks, the more he wants to ask her; but she needs to get this out.

“It _hurts_ ,” she says suddenly, like ripping off a bandage. “I thought - we were doing the right thing, we were helping the galaxy! And I’ve just been circling around those thoughts for days, and I can’t let them go, because it’s _true_. This isn’t right. But it’s the job of the Jedi to make things right.” She looks him straight in the eye, and he can still feel her doubts - but they’re less than they’ve been, and beyond her doubt, he can feel certainty. “I want to help make things right.”

Anakin feels so… so _proud_ , maybe, there’s this jumble of emotions right below his collarbone, warm and bright, and they all have to do with the small togruta initiate sitting right in front of him.

“I,” he says, then pauses. “I’ve just barely been knighted, and I don’t really know what I’m doing, here. Oh, Force, you just gave a really good speech and here I am messing everything up.”

Well, she’s giggling, so he can’t have messed _everything_ up.

“Look,” he says. “I - we work well together. You and I both know that there’s a rudimentary bond forming, and we’re both trying to ignore it, but the Force is telling me that this fits. This is right. I think that there are things I can teach you, if you want to learn.”

“I do want to learn,” Ahsoka says, still smiling.

“Ahsoka Tano,” he says. “Will you agree to be my padawan learner?”

“I will,” she says. _Master Skywalker_ , she says silently, through the bond that’s been forming between the two of them.

“When I said _same rules as my mom_ I meant it,” he reminds her. “Anakin. It’s not hard to say.”

Ahsoka shrugs. “If you say so.” A pause. “Skyguy.”

Anakin groans. “You know, you could at least do that to Beru, too.”

“I couldn’t give her a _nickname_ ,” Ahsoka says, sounding mock-horrified. “She could totally beat me in a fight!”

“What, like I couldn’t?” Anakin demands. “Come on. She’s going to start calling me _Skyguy_ sooner or later, she’s awful like that. Let’s team up and call her… uh… Sunshine.”

Ahsoka stares at him for a moment. “You are bad at this,” she says, almost delightedly. “That’s a horrible nickname. We should absolutely do that.”

_I’m a terrible influence on you_ , Anakin says in his head. _Let’s go terrify the galaxy, horrify the High Council, and free all the slaves_.

Ahsoka grins, bright and happy. “Let’s,” she says.

 

* * *

 

 

The ship is small and thin, which in shipbuilding terms translates to light and quick; it would have to be, for the Republic’s army to not notice her comings and goings from Tatooine.

Asajj is already out of the system when Gardulla falls, shooting through hyperspace and definitely not running. Retreating; that’s a better word for it.

Though her Master has said that there’s no shame in running if one is outmatched; better to live to fight another day and attack from the shadows than to charge an opponent head-on when there’s no chance to win. Her Master–

Not _that_ kind of Master, she thinks viciously. Lady Vulsion has saved her, freed her, given her power. Asajj is not trapped; she can leave any time she wants.

Can you leave without fear of retaliation? Something in the back of her mind seems to whisper to her. Can you, Asajj, can you?

_Yes_ , she thinks sharply, and turns her thoughts away, to other topics.

Hours later, she comes out of hyperspace; the planet below is green, flush with life and water. Asajj cloaks her ship and descends through the atmosphere, skimming over streams and forests until she arrives at one of her Master’s hideaways.

A droid greets her as she exits her ship.

“Lady Vulsion is currently in a meeting,” the droid says. “Shall I take you to your quarters?”

“No,” Asajj says shortly. Lady Vulsion had told her to report immediately, once Skywalker had defeated Gardulla; she’s not going to disobey.

Although she’ll never admit it, the walk through this hideout always sends shivers up Asajj’s spine. Maybe it’s the hundreds of displays, what her Master calls _trophies_ \- they vary from plates of metal, warped and cracked, to shattered remnants of some objects she can’t even tell the origin of, to a thousand other broken things. Some scream, in the Force, of misery and death; some of joy, of tearing down walls; some do nothing but whisper _sorrow, sorrow, endless sorrow_. Maybe what makes her uncomfortable is the way that the entire building is staffed only by droids; the only living things are her, her Master, and sometimes another.

Maybe it’s something else - something whispers, in the back of her head, can you really leave if you want to?

Asajj grits her teet and clenches her fists; the Force swirls around her, dark and malevolent. She is in _control_ , in _power_.

Lady Vulsion is in a meeting room, facing not a person but a hologram - one Asajj recognizes.

Her Master’s Shadow.

Asajj kneels and waits for her Master to acknowledge her.

Lady Vulsion feels like she always does in the Force; perhaps a storm, perhaps a tangled knot, perhaps one of the poisons she likes that smells sickly-sweet like something rotting. It’s clear at times in her stance, her movements, sometimes smooth and sometimes sudden, twitching; how she can go from furious to laughing in a second, and from honey-pleased to icy hate in half that time.

“… And keep the present timeline, I believe,” Lady Vulsion is saying, her horned mask tilted to the side. “Things are proceeding as planned on your end?”

“They have been,” the Shadow says. “Though last month’s complication still continues to have aftereffects.”

Her Master sighs, shifting her weight back and forth. “Well, my spies continue to report in, and this new mix doesn’t give them erratic behavior in the long term; as long as we can keep them solidly hooked, we should be able to balance everything just right.”

Nothing in the Shadow’s expression changes, but somehow Asajj can tell that their focus has shifted to her.

After a few moments, Lady Vulsion turns her face - her mask - to face Asajj. “My acolyte,” she says softly. “How was Tatooine?”

Asajj grimaces.

Lady Vulsion laughs, throwing her head back and letting it echo. “No, not a very fun planet. Useful, though; we have heard of Knight Skywalker’s success. Were there any problems?”

“Minor ones,” Asajj says. “A messenger arrived, telling them that their transmissions were compromised by Gardulla, who I suspect had been listening in to your other spies’ reports; I was forced to eavesdrop in person, and was… seen, once.” It’s embarrassing, being caught the first time she tried to spy in person; it’s a good thing she hadn’t been caught any of the other times.

“Who was it that caught you out?” Lady Vulsion asks, her voice not harsh but curious.

Asajj mumbles her answer.

Her Master waits patiently, her Shadow’s hologram silent at her side.

“The messenger,” she says finally, clear enough for Lady Vulsion to hear. “… An initiate. Perhaps a padawan now, with the way she and Skywalker were getting along. She is skilled with her lightsaber, for an initiate; she uses a variant of form V that I am unfamiliar with.”

Lady Vulsion crosses her arms. “Was my Shadow’s training insufficient?” she asks quietly. Dangerously. There’s the harshness that had been missing from her previous questions; Asajj must tread carefully here, as always.

“Never, my master,” she says. “Your Shadow’s training has been a great gift, skilled as your Shadow is; yet I am still but your acolyte, and have more to learn. I could have broken through her defenses with the skills I have learned from you and your Shadow, but Skywalker interrupted.” It's only a little bit of a lie; nobody needs to know that Asajj had let the messenger - let Tano - get away, in the tunnels beneath Gardulla's palace.

“That is reasonable,” Lady Vulsion’s Shadow says, voice muffled by the hologram’s encryption, face blurred by the same; the only reason Asajj knows that the Shadow is even humanoid is because they trained her in person. For all that, she has no clue of even the basics of their identity; their mask and robes served to conceal that. “She may have the skills to defeat Skywalker, but that was not part of our plan. She did well, did she not?”

Asajj grits her teeth at the ‘ _may;_ ’ she _can_ defeat Skywalker, if her Master wishes it. She just… didn’t wish it, so Asajj didn’t.

Lady Vulsion sighs and flicks her fingers sharply, once, twice, thrice. “She did,” she says finally. “Go, Asajj. I will have your full report later.”

Asajj dips her head, then stands and walks away.

“Has Sidious contacted you about his recent plans?” she hears the Shadow ask as she leaves the room.

“He _has_ ,” Lady Vulsion says, sounding almost delighted; then the door swings shut and Asajj hears no more.

The droid is waiting for her; she glares at it.

It doesn’t bother speaking, just bows and gestures for her to follow. Good; her temper’s not up to leaving it alive if it annoys her any more.

The droid leads her through the halls - not twisting ones, not tunnel-like but cavernous and decorated, yet still somehow managing to be more of a maze than anything else. Asajj memorizes her steps as she goes; so far she’s managed to avoid getting lost, the times her Master has used this base before, and this is why.

Her room - the room she’ll be staying in, at least - isn’t one she’s been in before, as usual. She doesn’t know whether her Master changes the rooms, moves all the furniture, all the decorations and the trophies, or whether they’re just in a different area every time, if there are enough rooms that Asajj can sleep in a different one each visit and still not see them all. Maybe it’s a test. Maybe it’s for security of some kind.

Maybe her Master just thinks it’s funny. Who knows? Not Asajj, much as she’d like to.

The droid leaves, and the lights dim; an indication that it’s time to sleep, and she should rest.

As if she would be put off her guard that easily, she thinks, and scoffs.

She disposes of the bugs she finds in the room and removes the glass of water that’s been left out. Levitation, not touching it - the water has certainly been poisoned, or at least drugged, but Asajj is not taking the chance that there’s a contact poison on the glass itself. The bed, at least, has been left alone; her Master needs her well-rested, not sleeping on the floor. Well, her Master needs her well-rested assuming that she doesn’t fall victim to the simplest of traps, like the ones she’s disarming right now; they have _some_ standards, after all.

Eventually, the room is clear, both of bugs and of dangers; now is the time for sleep.

So, of course, Asajj goes exploring.

Lady Vulsion’s trophies are creepy, strange-feeling; but Asajj is training to be _Sith_ , and she must take what she fears and conquer it.

She won’t go far; she can’t risk getting lost, and besides, it _has_ been a long day, starting with–

_Or are you still a slave?_

– It’s been a long day. She needs her rest.

The trophies in the corridor around her new room are… varied. They’re unlabeled, for the most part; these are for Lady Vulsion’s memories, not for just anyone to come view, to learn the history of. Asajj is able to guess the origins of a few - a crumbling brick, smeared with greenish blood, a trophy from Muunilinst; a slice of fruit, still looking almost dangerously fresh despite being years old, from a poisoning that she remembers hearing about; the sliced-off tongue of a Bothan that Asajj had collected herself. Others are similar, relics recovered from disasters her Master has engineered or trophies taken as threats. Some are just holographs, images of a scorched plains or a deep, echoing crater in the ground.

There are some, though, that are different. Some trophies, of course, Asajj just does not recognize, from events before her time; but then some are… not like the others.

A mask of the Bando Gora, horns twisting around each other, the mask’s face scarred and pitted, cut deep through the paint and even through the metal of the mask itself.

Four beads on a string - Asajj has to squint and guess at the colors, in the shadowed hallway. One is light grey, that much she can see; the one next to it she might mistake for white, but against the grey it’s clearly a pale blue. The third bead is a solid yellow, but the last bead is dark - probably colored, but the hallway’s gloom makes it impossible to tell the exact color.

The display that makes Asajj pause the most, though, is the one holding two lightsabers. Well, _almost_ two lightsabers. One is shiny, both in the Force and visibly, reflecting the lasts of the light; its hilt is strangely curved, twisted into almost an s-shape.

Asajj can only tell that the other object is a lightsaber because it’s paired with the first; the hilt is cracked, blackened, almost burnt. Though whatever could burn hot enough to blacken a lightsaber…

It’s time to go to bed, she decides. This is enough for now.

She makes her way back to her room, the whole time feeling like something’s watching her, though nothing can be, not here; she would know if it were her Master, and it’s not the droid. There’s _nothing else here_. Even if the sense of eyes on the back of her neck makes her want to tear away her own flesh–

Asajj shuts the door behind her; it doesn’t help her feel more secure.

Eventually, she gets into bed; eventually, she sleeps.

She dreams.

Human hands, reaching out to her - giving, taking, giving. _If you’re so afraid to answer the question, then are you truly free to leave if you want, Asajj,_ listen _–_

Asajj wakes with a start.

“Leave me _alone_ ,” she rasps, and closes her eyes. She is free. She _is_. Lady Vulsion has freed her from Rattatak, freed her from the chains of the light, given her power.

But this idea - _something_ , at least - has been twisting around and around in her head, and she needs answers.

With barely a moment’s hesitation, she gets out of bed, not bothering to pull on her shoes; she won’t be going far.

Out in the hallway, down through the corridors. Towards one of the trophies, one she’d been careful to stay far enough away from. A dark pyramid, small enough to fit in the palm of Ventress’s hand, though she doesn’t dare touch it; in the wrong light, from the wrong angles, there’s a faint red sheen to it.

Asajj kneels in front of it; a great deal can be gained from even a small amount of respect. And this? This deserves respect.

“I want to know about Shmi Skywalker,” Asajj whispers to the darkness.

The holocron _glows_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy holidays, and good luck to everyone who also has to deal with finals :) I'm always on tumblr, if people have questions or prompts or just want to come and chat!

**Author's Note:**

> And here's the remaining portion of the NaNo Disaster. NaNo isn't over yet, nor is this complete, but I'm getting restless and I want to show this off, so here we are.
> 
> I'll probably be posting the chapters on a Monday-Wednesday-Friday schedule.
> 
> As always, I'm on [tumblr](http://mirandatam.tumblr.com).


End file.
